The post below on Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog that contains responses from Spencer and Christy deserves wide distribution and attention, because it shows just how badly Ben Santer and John Abraham want to squelch this dataset. Particularly amusing is the labeling of a graph in an Andrew Freidman article at WaPo as alisting of “corrections”, when in fact it is nothing more than the advance of the trend in step with the graph below.
Addressing Criticisms of the UAH Temperature Dataset at 1/3 Century
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The UAH satellite-based global temperature dataset has reached 1/3 of a century in length, a milestone we marked with a press release in the last week (e.g. covered here).
As a result of that press release, a Capital Weather Gang blog post by Andrew Freedman was dutifully dispatched as damage control, since we had inconveniently noted the continuing disagreement between climate models used to predict global warming and the satellite observations.
What follows is a response by John Christy, who has been producing these datasets with me for the last 20 years:
Many of you are aware that as a matter of preference I do not use the blogosphere to report information about climate or to correct the considerable amount of misinformation that appears out there related to our work. My general rule is never to get in a fight with someone who owns an obnoxious website, because you are simply a tool of the gatekeeper at that point.
However, I thought I would do so here because a number of folks have requested an explanation about a blog post connected to the Washington Post that appeared on 20 Dec. Unfortunately, some of the issues are complicated, so the comments here will probably not satisfy those who want the details and I don’t have time to address all of its errors.
Earlier this week we reported on the latest monthly global temperature update, as we do every month, which is distributed to dozens of news outlets. With 33 years of satellite data now in the hopper (essentially a third of a century) we decided to comment on the long-term character, noting that the overall temperature trend of the bulk troposphere is less than that of the IPCC AR4 climate model projections for the same period. This has been noted in several publications, and to us is not a new or unusual statement.
Suggesting that the actual climate is at odds with model projections does not sit well with those who desire that climate model output be granted high credibility. I was alerted to this blog post within which are, what I can only call, “myths” about the UAH lower tropospheric dataset and model simulations. I’m unfamiliar with the author (Andrew Freedman) but the piece was clearly designed to present a series of assertions about the UAH data and model evaluation, to which we were not asked to respond. Without such a knowledgeable response from the expert creators of the UAH dataset, the mythology of the post may be preserved.
The first issue I want to address deals the relationship between temperature trends of observations versus model output. I often see such posts refer to an old CCSP document (2006) which, as I’ve reported in congressional testimony, was not very accurate to begin with, but which has been superseded and contradicted by several more recent publications.
These publications specifically document the fact that bulk atmospheric temperatures in the climate system are warming at only 1/2 to 1/4 the rate of the IPCC AR4 model trends. Indeed actual upper air temperatures are warming the same or less than the observed surface temperatures (most obvious in the tropics) which is in clear and significant contradiction to model projections, which suggest warming should be amplified with altitude.
The blog post even indicates one of its quoted scientists, Ben Santer, agrees that the upper air is warming less than the surface – a result with which no model agrees. So, the model vs. observational issue was not presented accurately in the post. This has been addressed in the peer reviewed literature by us and others (Christy et al. 2007, 2010, 2011, McKitrick et al. 2010, Klotzbach et al. 2009, 2010.)
Then, some people find comfort in simply denigrating the uncooperative UAH data (about which there have been many validation studies.) We were the first to develop a microwave-based global temperature product. We have sought to produce the most accurate representation of the real world possible with these data – there is no premium in generating problematic data. When problems with various instruments or processes are discovered, we characterize, fix and publish the information. That adjustments are required through time is obvious as no one can predict when an instrument might run into problems, and the development of such a dataset from satellites was uncharted territory before we developed the first methods.
The Freedman blog post is completely wrong when it states that “when the problems are fixed, the trend always goes up.” Indeed, there have been a number of corrections that adjusted for spurious warming, leading to a reduction in the warming trend. That the scientists quoted in the post didn’t mention this says something about their bias.
The most significant of these problems we discovered in the late 1990’s in which the calibration of the radiometer was found to be influenced by the temperature of the instrument itself (due to variable solar shadowing effects on a drifting polar orbiting spacecraft.) Both positive and negative adjustments were listed in the CCSP report mentioned above.
We are always working to provide the best products, and we may soon have another adjustment to account for an apparent spurious warming in the last few years of the aging Aqua AMSU (see operational notes here). We know the data are not perfect (no data are), but we have documented the relatively small error bounds of the reported trends using internal and external evidence (Christy et al. 2011.)
A further misunderstanding in the blog post is promoted by the embedded figure (below, with credit given to a John Abraham, no affiliation). The figure is not, as claimed in the caption, a listing of “corrections”:
The major result of this diagram is simply how the trend of the data, which started in 1979, changed as time progressed (with minor satellite adjustments included.) The largest effect one sees here is due to the spike in warming from the super El Nino of 1998 that tilted the trend to be much more positive after that date. (Note that the diamonds are incorrectly placed on the publication dates, rather than the date of the last year in the trend reported in the corresponding paper – so the diamonds should be shifted to the left by about a year. The 33 year trend through 2011 is +0.14 °C/decade.)
The notion in the blog post that surface temperature datasets are somehow robust and pristine is remarkable. I encourage readers to check out papers such as my examination of the Central California and East African temperature records. Here I show, by using 10 times as many stations utilized in the popular surface temperature datasets, that recent surface temperature trends are highly overstated in these regions (Christy et al. 2006; 2009). We also document how surface development disrupts the formation of the nocturnal boundary layer in many ways, leading to warming nighttime temperatures.
That’s enough for now. The Washington Post blogger, in my view, is writing as a convinced advocate, not as a curious scientist or impartial journalist. But, you already knew that.
In addition to the above, I (Roy) would like to address comments made by Ben Santer in the Washington Post blog:
A second misleading claim the (UAH) press release makes is that it’s simply not possible to identify the human contribution to global warming, despite the publication of studies that have done just that. “While many scientists believe it [warming] is almost entirely due to humans, that view cannot be proved scientifically,” Spencer states.
Ben Santer, a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said Spencer and Christy are mistaken. “People who claim (like Roy Spencer did) that it is “impossible” to separate human from natural influences on climate are seriously misinformed,” he wrote via email. “They are ignoring several decades of relevant research and literature. They are embracing ignorance.” “Many dozens of scientific studies have identified a human “fingerprint” in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature change,” Santer stated.
In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).
Many papers indeed have claimed to find a human “fingerprint”, but upon close examination the evidence is simply consistent with human caused warming — while conveniently neglecting to point out that the evidence would also be consistent with naturally caused warming. This disingenuous sleight-of-hand is just one more example of why the public is increasingly distrustful of the climate scientists they support with their tax dollars.
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UAH and RSS on the whole agree very well with one another (although in recent years UAH is running a little warm in comparison to RSS).
If this science was new. ie., just set up/come about as a new discipline in the last few years, what is the betting that scientist would (i) prefer the UAH and RSS data over all land based data sets (the latter being collected by stations/instruments not designed for the purpose to which it is presently put, stations poorly cited and unquantified problems with UHI); and (ii) look at the UAH and RSS data and Argo data, and not be alarmed that there was any problem with global warming.
The reality is that there is no global warming scare based upon either the UAH data set or on the RSS data set, PERIOD. Thus the cAGW crowd have to discredit these 2 data sets and have to use the land based data sets notwithstranding the obvious shortcomings with the land based data sets. Crazy really.
James Sexton says:
December 22, 2011 at 8:36 am
HenryP says:
December 22, 2011 at 2:08 am
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
Henry’s approach is intuitive.
I do not know whether his data is correct nor whether his analysis of the data is sound, but if it properly suggest that day time maxima are increasing significantly faster than nighttime minima then this would suggest that temperatures are being driven by solar influence (in which I include a change in cloudiness and/or reduction in the opaqueness of the atmosphere inaddition to TSI etc) rather than by CO2.
James Sexton says
While anyone who knows me, knows I posses a rather inflated view of self, it isn’t large enough to believe I can understand all that Nature is doing. I can’t. I’m not sure it is a worthwhile venture.
Henry@James Baldwin
I have checked the woodfortrees website. It is interesting to me. I will go back there again when I get more time.
Thanks for explaining your position. Acknowledging that Nature (God) is higher than yourself is indeed the beginning of all knowledge. … Myself, I also believe more warming is better (for nature, e.g. for more trees to grow) ,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
it is just that I have now developed this curiosty to know why it is happening.
I think I am on this path because I suspect that it will not continue to warm forever, so when it stops, should we not be ready?
Richard Verney says
Henry’s approach is intuitive.
I do not know whether his data is correct nor whether his analysis of the data is sound, but if it (properly suggest) is that day time maxima are increasing significantly faster than nighttime minima then this would suggest that temperatures are being driven by solar influence (in which I include a change in cloudiness and/or reduction in the opaqueness of the atmosphere inaddition to TSI etc) rather than by CO2.
Henry@richard
IMHO, your conclusion is correct.
To check my tables you can sample all the data from a single weather station, like the data from here
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/no-global-warming-in-brisbane-australia
Pamela Gray says:
December 22, 2011 at 7:15 am
Actually, with the right connections, you could get a PAL review and get published in a major scientific journal. We see Warmists do it all the time.
ScuzzaMan says:
December 22, 2011 at 5:04 am
“But really, a scientific process is merely one in which no obvious mistakes have been made. The results may be good, bad, or indifferent, depending largely on one’s point of view.”
So, when the waiter spits in your food and you cannot detect it, you call that scientific?
James Sexton says:
December 21, 2011 at 9:07 pm
“There is one other thought that should be vocalized. If, the contention is that our satellites are wrong…… which it must be the satellites and not the interpreters because of such close agreement with the two separate groups gathering satellite data,(gosh I love typing that! 🙂 )…….. then, our satellites are wrong about much more than just temps.”
Very well said and absolutely crucial in our understanding of Warmism. Our science of satellite instrumentation is the twin of our climate science and both are in the birth canal.
Roy Spencer says: December 21, 2011 at 4:10 pm
That blogger (“thefordprefect”?) should have read the disclaimer at the Discover website before critically comparing the daily, automated, “quick-and-dirty” AMSU data averages posted there with the intercalibrated and quality controlled data in our monthly updates of the UAH dataset.
Our corrections are NOT (as the blogger claims) “undisclosed”. If the blogger took the time to read our publications, he/she would not make such uninformed claims
==============
thanks for answering but I cannot find your change log for the data. Could you provide a link please?
Also you seem to be saying that this page is vitually useless. Why provide it if the data is wrong?
Why not correct it to the same state as your quality controlled data?
There seems to have been no attempt to intercallibrate data from the various sattelites with up to 2K temp differences between supposedly same altitudes but different satellites. Why not?
Could you also point to similar “altitude” data sets that are corrected please.
‘We have sought to produce the most accurate representation of the real world ‘ There is the problem , this is in conflict with the first rule of climate science which states ‘when the value of anything differs between reality and the model , its reality which is in error ‘.
Theo,
I dont know what’s crawled up your leg, and I’m not interested.
Here’s a hint for future reference: Context.
With all the supposed warming around the globe, how come my thermometer outside my house could not climb above 4F this morning. Seems I may be missing the “global” part of global warming. Just asking.
That last from Andrew Dessler seems a particularly ugly lie. There are a whole raft of adjustments made to surface temperature data from thermometers. Without one of them called Time of Observation Bias, which began to be applied around 1990, there is virtually no warming at all in the surface temperature record! The scope of surface temperature adjustments are nothing short of phenomenal. The pencil done to fill in the gigantic gaps in surface coverage are particularly breathtaking. Gridding, comparisons and averaging with neighboring stations, it’s such a fantastic web of calculations it can’t be done without a computer and it’s all to coerce an instrument array that was never designed for nor capable of either global measurement of temperature nor measurements accurate to tenths of degrees into producing a global record accurate to tenths of degrees. And according to the link below which describes all the current adjustments and when they were discovered to be necessary there is yet another adjustment in the wings waiting to make its debut on stage.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
Now while there might not have been new adjustments “every few years” to the thermometer record there was a whole raft of adjustments that, without which there would be NO GLOBAL WARMING, all applied right around 1988. That year will go down in history as the year that man-made global warming was invented. The man-made part means it was manufactured from the instrument record by a series of adjustments to the actual thermometer readings.
One might also take into consideration that the thermometer was invented hundreds of years ago and is a rather simple affair that for hundreds of years didn’t need any “corrections”. The adjustments were only needed to gin up the anthropogenic global warming hoax circa 1988. Conversely satellite sensors of atmospheric temperature were invented in the 1970’s and they are complex electronic affairs that only high tech geeks can actually understand the theory of operation and even so they’re still learning. What’s truly remarkable,which Dessler ought to understand, is that number of corrections needed for that technology over the years is amazingly few. He should also acknowledge that just as many corrections are applied to the thermometer record and he should also acknowledge that without the thermometer adjustments there is no global warming at all.
So there. I fart in Dessler’s general direction. What a scoundrel. I’m ashamed that he lives in the same state as me. He’s an embarrassment to all Texans and a really big embarrassment for Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University who employs his sorry ass.
@Roy Spencer
“In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).”
I beg to differ here, Roy. The difference will show up as either greater warming at the surface or greater warming at altitude by cloud or CO2 respectively.
This has to with the radiative response characteristics of water to visible and infrared radiation. A decrease in cloud cover increases visible light which falls upon the ocean. An increase in CO2 increases the amount of far infrared which falls upon the ocean. In the case of visible light the ocean is transparent to it and it is gradually absorbed by impurities in the water until at a depth of hundred meters or so it is completely extinguished. Thus visible light warms the ocean down to some substantial remove from the surface.
Far infrared on the other hand is absorbeb by the ocean in the top few micrometers and this energy is immediately rejected as latent heat of vaporization. There are no forces which serve to mix this instantaneious heating of the skin layer downwards. Several studies in the peer reviewed literature attest to this as well as numerous ocean heat budget studies which show that the great majority of ocean heat loss occurs through evaporation.
So then the difference between greenhouse gas increase and cloud cover decrease is that cloud cover decrease warms the ocean which then warms the air and the greatest heating will be in the surface air layer. CO2 warming on the other hand will cause the additional energy at the ocean surface excess heat to be entrained in latent heat of vaporization which does not heat the surface air but rather rises insensibly until adiabatic cooling drops to the dewpoint and the energy is then released at altitude.
So this is how you tell apart increased CO2 warming from lesser cloud cover warming. The $64,000 question thus becomes is the surface air warming faster or is the air at altitude warming faster?
I think you and I know the answer to that question. It’s now just a matter of how long it takes the climate science community to acknowledge it.
All the observations start making complete sense when the physics of water in regard to its different response to visible and far infrared light are correctly understood and applied. CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.
QED
Dave says:
CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.
Henry@Dave
Well, professor, it does not make sense to me. I think we argued about this before. I tested your theory on 2 islands and it did not work out. I compared the records of Easter Island with that of Minamitorishima. Easter island (-27 in the pacific) follows SH trend, Mininatorishima (+ 24 also in the pacific) follows the NH trend. According to your theory I should get similar results.
My suface temp. estimate is now 0.0137 degree C per annum for the past 37 years which actually corresponds with Roy’s 0.14C/decade.
But from my records I am able to see what is happening.
I am convinced it has nothing to do with CO2. See my comments made earlier.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-839937
&
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-840419
P.S. added below
@Roy Spencer
“In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).”
I beg to differ here, Roy. The difference will show up as either greater warming at the surface or greater warming at altitude by cloud or CO2 respectively.
This has to with the radiative response characteristics of water to visible and infrared radiation. A decrease in cloud cover increases visible light which falls upon the ocean. An increase in CO2 increases the amount of far infrared which falls upon the ocean. In the case of visible light the ocean is transparent to it and it is gradually absorbed by impurities in the water until at a depth of hundred meters or so it is completely extinguished. Thus visible light warms the ocean down to some substantial remove from the surface.
Far infrared on the other hand is absorbeb by the ocean in the top few micrometers and this energy is immediately rejected as latent heat of vaporization. There are no forces which serve to mix this instantaneious heating of the skin layer downwards. Several studies in the peer reviewed literature attest to this as well as numerous ocean heat budget studies which show that the great majority of ocean heat loss occurs through evaporation.
So then the difference between greenhouse gas increase and cloud cover decrease is that cloud cover decrease warms the ocean which then warms the air and the greatest heating will be in the surface air layer. CO2 warming on the other hand will cause the additional energy at the ocean surface excess heat to be entrained in latent heat of vaporization which does not heat the surface air but rather rises insensibly until adiabatic cooling drops to the dewpoint and the energy is then released at altitude.
So this is how you tell apart increased CO2 warming from lesser cloud cover warming. The $64,000 question thus becomes is the surface air warming faster or is the air at altitude warming faster?
I think you and I know the answer to that question. It’s now just a matter of how long it takes the climate science community to acknowledge it.
All the observations start making complete sense when the physics of water in regard to its different response to visible and far infrared light are correctly understood and applied. CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.
QED
P.S. This is also in complete agreement with the models which predict that CO2 warming will be greater at altitude. Given that 70% of the earth’s surface is oceanic and most land is at least occasionally wet and CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere then the lion’s share of CO2 warming fingerprint on a global average basis will be greater warming at altitude than at the surface. The models evidently take this into account if that’s what they predict.
The problems and confusion arise because the thermometer record is primarily land based and surface based so it does not have any appreciable ability to accurately produce a temperature record for the atmosphere at any level over the ocean and only a modest ability through radiosonde data to get temperature readings at altitude. I used to routinely launch radiosondes in my military days back in the early 1970’s and I was the technician responsible for calibration, maintenance, and repair of the eletronics involved with it. I’m here to tell you’d be damn lucky to get sub-degree repeatibility of temperature measurements from those things for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is adiabatic cooling and once the balloon is downrange a few miles it is next to impossible to get the tracking antenna elevation reading so precise that you could say with confidence the balloon’s altitude down to 10’s of meters. Given that adiabatic cooling is 1C per 100 meters elevation an elevation error on the antenna of just hundreths of a degree when the balloon is downrage thousands of meters translates into altitude errors of tens of meters and thus comparison errors at same altitude between different launches of half a degree C or more.
That magnitude of error was perfectly acceptable for the intended purpose of the radiosondes which was to give pilots and artillery controllers accurate winds and temperatures and relative humidity aloft as well as helping weather forecasters make predictions which effect military planning, operation, and execution. The sounding datums, which are important for a number of reasons, are pretty much oblivious to small comparative inaccuracies between different soundings. And of course soundings done from dry land are far more numerous than soundings done aboard a ship at sea. The gear I used would have been quite incapable of an accurate sounding on a ship at sea as it had no provision for removing the motion of the ship from the motion of the balloon. There may have been sounding gear with that capability however provided the motion of the ship wasn’t too abrupt. My tracking antenna massed a few hundred kilos and there was only so fast the servo motors could move it to keep it locked onto the radio under the sounding balloon. In fact we often had to manually track the balloon for a bit right after launch especially in high winds because the balloon would be moving so fast so close to the antenna that it couldn’t keep up with the motion.
@HenryP
Surface temperature records from two islands hardly constitutes a global record. There are decadal fluctuations in ocean surface temps which will control the temperatures on those two islands. You must have global coverage of both surface and altitude to draw conclusions.
Try again.
“Dave,
you said (some time ago) that you won’t see much of an CO2 effect over oceans (seas) because (earth’s) water does not really give off much radiation of the 14-15 um type.
and you quoted a paper
So I tested this. In several ways. Islands in the ocean were chosen randomly. Even at similar distrances at opposite sides of the equator.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
(but I have not yet added the Minamitorishima result in the table)
The long and short of it is that your theory does not hold up. Islands in the oceans behave exactly the same as land. They behave according to their place on earth, whether in the NH or SH.
And NH and SH have widely different warming rates.
As explained here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/ben-santers-damage-control-on-uah-global-temperature-data/#comment-839937
Eric (skeptic) says:
…And, actually, it is not very hard to figure out how much is due to each since you can just apply the current algorithm to the data cut off at various times. I did that as of a few years ago (Dec 2008) and found that it was pretty close to 50-50%. In particular, the original trend that they had reported was -0.076 C / decade for the Jan 1979 – Apr 1997 data and if you look at the trend over the same period in the “current” (Dec 2008) version, you get +0.029 C / decade and a trend over the entire data set of +0.127 C / decade. Hence, 0.105 C / decade of the change from the old trend to the Dec 2008 trend was due to the corrections and 0.098 C / decade was due to the longer data record.
I have not updated this analysis since Dec 2008 but I imagine it won’t change much as the only updates they have made to the analysis are ones that they say have almost no effect on the overall trend.
In Burrito says:
How do you know that they don’t predict the temperature vs altitude at a single instant of time? If you are thinking about plots showing the lack of a “hot spot” then you are misinterpreting those plots…They are not plots of the temperature vs altitude at a single instant in time. They are plots of the multidecadal trend in the temperature at various altitudes.
And, in fact, the models do even do a pretty good job with trends in temperature vs altitude over shorter timescales. If you look at fluctuations in temperature over the timescale of months to a few years (e.g., due to ENSO) then the “hot spot” (magnification of fluctuations as you go up in the tropical troposphere) is there, and this severely limits possible explanations for whatever discrepancy exists between the models and the data for trends over the multidecadal timescales.
It is only when one looks at the trend over multidecadal timescales that it may be absent. However, the data are less reliable for these trends, as is apparent from the discrepancies between various analyses and re-analyses of satellite and radiosonde data. And, it is understood how various artifacts due to instrumentation could contaminate the trends.
So, the summary conclusion is that the models and data are in pretty good agreement over timescales where the data is trustworthy and the largest disagreement is over timescales for which the data is problematic. This suggests that it may be as much or more a problem with the data than with the models.
The essence of any competent practitioner’s credentials is the ability to predict a result.
However, NOT ONE of the scary predictions of the global warming alarmists has materialized.
The global warmists have NO PREDICTIVE SKILL!
In fact, their predictive skill is negative – to date, their dire predictions have all been FALSE!
Anyone who still listens to them is clearly unaware of this critical fact, or is so brainwashed that facts no longer matter.
Given the negative track record of the warming alarmists, just ask yourself one question:
Would you hire someone with this dismal track record to paint your house, tow your car, or fix your toilet?
P.S. Merry Christmas to all.
(even you global warming alarmists)
Regarding the human fingerprint, isn’t the true test to see whether or not GAT rises above the historical average? I’ve always wondered this, how can we pick an arbitrary starting point such as 1800-present and attribute any warming to man? After all, isn’t the temperature simply replicating something it has done before?
Additionally, since the earth is below average atmospheric co2, doesn’t this make human attribution even harder to detect?
Dr. Christy follows climatological tradition by comparing climate model projections of the global temperature to a global temperature time series. However, such a comparison logically results in neither the falsification nor corroboration of model claims. For the purpose of falsifying the claims of bad models and corroborating the claims of good ones, the procedure is to compare model predictions of the outcomes of statistical events to the observed outcomes. We are prevented from doing so by the fact that climatologists have not yet gotten to the tasks of: a) modifying the climate models such that they make predictions b) describing the complete set of statistically independent statistical events whose outcomes are predicted by the models and c) computing the outcomes of those events which have been observed.
“All the observations start making complete sense when the physics of water in regard to its different response to visible and far infrared light are correctly understood and applied. CO2 over the ocean warms the atmosphere at altitude. CO2 over land warms the atmosphere at the surface. Simple, elegant, and in complete agreement with the observations.”
Agreed.
All that more GHGs achieve is a faster water cycle and a surface air pressure redistribution. The relative positions sizes and intensities of the permanent climate zones shift a fraction but by far the largest such shifts are system responses to solar and oceanic variability.Solar and oceanic variability have an effect on global cloud cover so as to alter the amount of solar energy entering the oceans to fuel the system. The effect of GHGs is puny in comparison even taking GHGs including water vapour as a whole.
Whereas the shifts were up to 1000 miles latitudinally from MWP to LIA and LIA to date the effect from more human emissions could well be less than a mile unless someone can prove otherwise.
It was never GHGs that made the system warmer than it otherwise would be. It was always the oceans and always will be until they freeze solid or evaporate to space.
Arrhenius et al never included solar shortwave into the oceans as part of their equations. They only ever considered the air and got it wrong as a result.
Water in liquid form in the oceans is the real determinant of the global atmospheric temperature.
Thus a Hot Water Bottle Effect rather than a Greenhouse Effect.
“i.e. less clouds and/or more intense sunshine, especially so in the SH.
So, what we see is happening from my dataset is that more heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by current weather systems to the NH.”
Agreed.
During the late 20th century warming period there was less cloudiness in the tropics as the equatorial air masses expanded and pushed the clouds poleward. More solar energy entered the oceans to skew ENSO in favour of warming El Ninos.
The position has changed since the late 90s when global cloudiness began to increase again and the warming trend stopped.
Whatever happens next will be a crucial diagnostic indicator but it looks very much as though solar and oceanic effects are way ahead of anything that GHGs can achieve. The sun and the oceans achieve their effects on solar input to the oceans by altering global albedo through cloudiness changes that are linked to the latitudinal positions of the permanent climate zones.
Simple, elegant, true.