Atmospheric Aerosols and the Death of Nature
Guest post by Dr. Patrick Michaels
Big news last week was that new findings published in Nature magazine showed that human emissions of aerosols (primarily from fossil fuel use) have been largely responsible for the multi-decadal patterns of sea surface temperature variability in the Atlantic ocean that have been observed over the past 150 years or so. This variability—commonly referred to as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO—has been linked to several socially significant climate phenomena including the ebb and flow of active Atlantic hurricane periods and drought in the African Sahel.
This paper marks, in my opinion, the death of credibility for Nature on global warming. The first symptoms showed up in 1996 when they published a paper by Ben Santer and 13 coauthors that was so obviously cherry-picked that it took me and my colleagues about three hours to completely destroy it. Things have gone steadily downhill, from a crazy screamer by Jonathan Patz on mortality from warming that didn’t even bother to examine whether fossil fuels were associated with extended lifespan (they are), to the recent Shakun debacle. But the latest whopper, by Ben Booth and his colleagues at the UK Met Office indeed signals the death of Nature in this field.
The U.K. Met Office issued a press release touting the findings by several of their researchers, and didn’t pull any punches as to the study’s significance. The headline read “Industrial pollution linked to ‘natural’ disasters” and included things like:
These shifts in ocean temperature, known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO, are believed to affect rainfall patterns in Africa, South America and India, as well as hurricane activity in the North Atlantic – in extreme cases leading to humanitarian disasters.
Ben Booth, a Met Office climate processes scientist and lead author of the research, said: “Until now, no-one has been able to demonstrate a physical link to what is causing these observed Atlantic Ocean fluctuations, so it was assumed they must be caused by natural variability.
“Our research implies that far from being natural, these changes could have been largely driven by dirty pollution and volcanoes. If so, this means a number of natural disasters linked to these ocean fluctuations, such as persistent African drought during the 1970’s and 80’s, may not be so natural after all.”
An accompanying “News and Views” piece in Nature put the findings of Booth and colleagues in climatological perspective:
If Booth and colleagues’ results can be corroborated, then they suggest that multidecadal temperature fluctuations of the North Atlantic are dominated by human activity, with natural variability taking a secondary role. This has many implications. Foremost among them is that the AMO does not exist, in the sense that the temperature variations concerned are neither intrinsically oscillatory nor purely multidecadal.
But not everyone was so impressed with the conclusions of Booth et al.
For instance, Judith Curry had this to say at her blog, “Climate Etc.,”
Color me unconvinced by this paper. I suspect that if this paper had been submitted to J. Geophysical Research or J. Climate, it would have been rejected. In any event, a much more lengthy manuscript would have been submitted with more details, allowing people to more critically assess this. By publishing this, Nature seems to be looking for headlines, rather than promoting good science.
And Curry has good reason to be skeptical.
“In press” at the journal Geophysical Research Letters is a paper titled “Greenland ice core evidence for spatial and temporal variability of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” by Petr Chylek and colleagues, including Chris Folland of the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office.
In this paper, Chylek et al. examine evidence of the AMO that is contained in several ice core records distributed across Greenland. The researchers were looking to see whether there were changes in the character of the AMO over different climatological periods in the past, such as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period—periods that long preceded large-scale human aerosol emissions. And indeed they found some. The AMO during the Little Ice Age was characterized by a quasi-periodicity of about 20 years, while the during the Medieval Warm Period the AMO oscillated with a period of about 45 to 65 years.
And Chylek and colleagues had this to say about the mechanisms involved:
The observed intermittency of these modes over the last 4000 years supports the view that these are internal ocean-atmosphere modes, with little or no external forcing.
Better read that again. “…with little or no external forcing.”
Chylek’s conclusion is vastly different from the one reached by Booth et al., which in an Editorial, Nature touted as [emphasis added]:
[B]ecause the AMO has been implicated in global processes, such as the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes and drought in the Sahel region of Africa in the 1980s, the findings greatly extend the possible reach of human activity on global climate. Moreover, if correct, the study effectively does away with the AMO as it is currently posited, in that the multidecadal oscillation is neither truly oscillatory nor multidecadal.
Funny how the ice core records analyzed by Chylek (as opposed to the largely climate model exercise of Booth et al.) and show the AMO to be both oscillatory and multidecadal—and to be exhibiting such characteristics long before any possible human influence.
Judith Curry’s words “By publishing this, Nature seems to be looking for headlines, rather than promoting good science” seem to ring loud and true in light of further observation-based research.
May God rest the soul of Nature.
References:
Booth, B., et al., 2012. Aerosols implicated as a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature10946, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10946.html
Chylek, P., et al., 2012. Greenland ice core evidence for spatial and temporal variability of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Geophysical Research Letters, in press, http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051241.shtml
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John@EF (April 12, 2012),
You’ve got the wrong paper.
-Chip Knappenberger
John@EF,
You are so pwned!
Smokey says:
April 12, 2012 at 9:54 am
John@EF,
You are so pwned!
=====
While I wait for Chip to reply, perhaps you could answer the questions I posed too, given, I was so pwned, and such. Thanks in advance.
As used by Nature and other AGW journals, Climate Science(?) “Models” are morphing into useful “public-consumption transfer functions.” Specifically, to give gravitas to a Climate Scare Story, (1) a Scary Climate Scenario is conceived, (2) a “Model” is created that translates (transfers) the Scary Climate Scenario into scientific terms which the general public doesn’t understand but assumes are valid because after all who can question all those scientific terms?, and (3) the “inverse” of the scientific terms which reconstructs the “Scary Climate Scenario” is then used to “prove” the Scary Climate Scenario.” P.T. Barnum would be proud.
higley7 says:
April 12, 2012 at 4:57 am
It is no surprise that they take CO2 data from ice cores and correlate them with temperatures from away, derived from data not of that area.
They just as logically merged Antarctic ice core data with Mauna Loa volcano data to produce their fraudulent CO2 record for the last 100 years and we know what they had to do to make the data merge nicely, advancing data in to the future until they overlapped.
Highley, sorry but the CO2 data from ice cores are not “advanced in the future”, that is something the late Jaworowski said, but that only shows that he didn’t accept that the age of the gas phase in ice cores is (much) younger than the ice at the same depth. Jaworowski was completely wrong. That was proven by Etheridge e.a. already in 1996. Here the results:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_overlap.jpg
Joseph Bastardi says:
April 12, 2012 at 8:33 am
So we are to believe that the oceans, with a thousand times the heat capacity of the air, are being driven by trace gas needed for life on the planet that accounts for 1/400th of the greenhouse gasses and .04% of the atmosphere? Also the supposed facts that TERMITES emit over 56 billion tonnes of c02 to mans 22 billion tonnes.
.04% of your bodyweight as cyanide is enough to kill you. Percentages are not important, effect is. Not that I think that the increase from 0.03% to 0.04% of CO2 in the atmosphere will have a huge effect, but it is of no help to use arguments which make no sense. The same for what termites emit. That was and is a part of the natural cycle. Except if you have some knowledge that the emissions from termites increased in the recent past in ratio with human emissions, that may be an interesting point (but not more than that). Human emissions are additional to the natural carbon cycle, termite emissions are just part of it…
I just ran across an interesting Scientific American Article. in my comment here, I linked to a study that shows dicey conduct on the part of scientists is rather common. However the Scientific American Article, base on the opinion of Dr. Goldstein.
So it would seem that the “gate keepers” in the universities like Goodstein at Caltech are imitating the three monkeys, not scientists. If 14.12% outright falsification, and up to 72% questionable research practices is what Dr. Goodstein and Scientific American considered “rare” I would hate to see what they would consider “alarming”
1st they had to get rid of the MWP, then the LIA, now the AMO, next it’ll be the PDO. They won’t rest till they have erradicated all possible natural variation, leading to the unescapable conclusion that it can only be man and man alone that is the culprit.
Is this the same model used to predict milder UK winters? I call the paper horse s##t.
John@EF says:
April 12, 2012 at 8:16 am
I have seen the first part of the film you presented. It seems that the main counterargument is exactly where this discussion is about. Santer used the “best estimate” of cooling aerosols, but that is very questionable and doesn’t explain the temperature increase in the period 1910-1945, which is as steep as in the period 1975-2000, neither does it the current standstill in temperature at record CO2 emissions, while the Western countries reduced their SO2 emissions, but SE Asia increased theirs with about the same amount. Thus the recent period doesn’t show any increase in cooling aerosols. Moreover even above China, most of the aerosols measured in the free atmosphere are of natural origin:
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/publications/heald_2005.pdf
In my opinion, aerosols were just a scapegoat to fit the models with the 1945-1975 cooling. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/aerosols.html
John@EF (April 12, 2012 at 9:38 am).
Sorry, John, I stand corrected. I recalled Santer’s (a href=”http://www.masterresource.org/2010/12/divvy-up/”>incorrect in my opinion) rebuttal to Pat’s demonstration that the IPCC’s usage of the term “very likely” was not appropriate in assigning most of the warming since the mid-20th century to increases in GHGs, but I had forgotten that the 1996 paper was also brought up at the Hearing. As you may have guessed, I was not as convinced/enamored/taken in by Ben’s defense of his 1996 paper as you were.
-Chip
@pcknappenberger says: April 12, 2012 at 10:55 am
Thanks for your reply, Chip. Your impression of non/convincing nature of Santer’s brief defense against Michaels attack on the 1996 paper in that clip aside for a moment – remember, Santer e.a. had already replyed to Michaels’ criticism a written journal response – I’m interested in your impression of the veracity of Michael’s testimony, generally. There are other clips from that testimony available for viewing too. Michaels adheres to his now primary role of advocate, where rhetorical tools like half-truths, diversion, etc., abound. I’m sorry, but Pat Michaels is not a credible source if you’re interested in balanced and comprehensive analysis and commentary on these issues.
John@EF says:
“I’m sorry, but Pat Michaels is not a credible source if you’re interested in balanced and comprehensive analysis and commentary…”
I’m sorry, this article is on the crashing credibility of the journal Nature. If you want to make statements about “balanced and comprehensive analysis and commentary”, then we will discuss the thoroughly corrupt individuals on your side of the fence: Hansen, Schmidt, Mann, Santer, and all the rest of the conniving, unethical rent-seeking reprobates on display in the Climategate emails. Not one of them has any honesty or credibility, the emails simply show variations of how corrupt each individual tax sponge is.
More FABRICATED aerosol data..
Booth et al. reportedly use the historical aerosol emissions pathway defined for CMIP5.
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/forcing.html
I have included some excerpts below, but have only a limited time to pursue this question. Perhaps others have more time to investigate further.
I infer from this information that the aerosol data used in the climate computer models (particularly pre-1970) is as I stated before – fabricated, not measured.
Furthermore, the fabricated data is inconsistent with historic measurements.
Regards, Allan
4. Emissions data for other chemical species. 14 Jan 2010
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/forcing.htm
The pre-industrial, historical and future (RCP) emissions of other greenhouse gases and of anthropogenic aerosols are available at two sites in slightly different formats and with one site resolving the annual cycle. The basic data are supposed to be the same. Here are the site URLs:
IIASA: http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/tnt/RcpDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=welcome
Juelich: ftp://ftp-ipcc.fz-juelich.de/pub/emissions/gridded_netcdf/tarfiles/
[ On some browsers clicking on this link may not work. If it doesn’t, try to reach the site from a terminal window: ftp ftp-ipcc.fz-juelich.de (user: anonymous, passwd: {your_email} )]
There are no emissions data currently available for natural aerosols (e.g., volcanic, sea salts, dust).
________
Data Downloads
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/tnt/RcpDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=download
Please register in order to download data. Files include spreadsheets for harmonized global concentrations and radiative forcings, and harmonized regional emissions. Spatial emissions are provided as separate files in net-cdf format.
CMIP5 recommended data is provided in a separate download section further below (available upon registration). The CMIP5 data includes:
1) historical atmospheric concentrations as well as concentrations for the RCPs (2005-2100) and their extension to 2300 (ECPs). In total, atmospheric concentration of the following gases are provided: CO2, CH4, N2O, all flourinated gases controlled under the Kyoto Protocol (HFCs, PFCs, and SF6), and ozone depleting substances controlled under the Montreal Protocol ( CFCs, HCFCs, Halons, CCl4, CH3Br, CH3Cl).
2) historical emissions data (1850 – 2000) as well as emissions for the RCPs (2000-2100). In total emissions of the following gases are provided: CH4, SO2, NOx, CO, NH3, as well as of BC, OC and VOC. Other additional species such as C2H4O (acetaldehyde), C2H5OH (ethanol), C2H6S (dimethyl sulphide), C3H6O (acetone), etc. are available only for historical biomass burning emissions (see below).
3) historical aerosols data (1850 – 2000) on the following species: sulfate (SO4), ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3), hydrophobic black carbon (CB1), hydrophilic black carbon (CB2), hydrophobic organic carbon (CB1), hydrophilic organic carbon (CB2), secondary organic aerosols (SOA), dust (DST01-04, small to large sizes)) and sea-salt SSLT01-04). In addition, temperature (T) and surface pressure (PS) is provided to enable unit conversion (all aerosol are in kg/kg, dry mass).
4) historical and RCP land-use projections and associated land-use transitions.
It is a strange story. If you can imagine for an end to football games, then perhaps the argument on the global warming can also be considered as “terminated”. Journal Nature was respected for years, but now it is hated overnight. Excommunication of a magazine? Why? Say that Journal Nature has suffered from politicization?
At this point, the number of interpretations that appear in this heated up debate is nearly about 130. Not too many. With this small number, Nature is neither discredited nor destroyed. Your success in dealing with opposing views have been so far through the use of your patience reasonably in solving scientific problems, neither have been accusations of your opponents nor their excommunication. Journal Nature is just like the football field. You can play, just do it. Your reasons are still there and as it turns out you did not dodge a debate with the rival groups ever. This is a new opportunity. This is just the beginning. To me the fact is that the topic was just an excuse for a new start. that’s pretty NICE.
acckkii says:
“Journal Nature was respected for years, but now it is hated overnight. Excommunication of a magazine? Why? Say that Journal Nature has suffered from politicization?”
Not “overnight”. This problem has been ramping up for years. You can read about the collusion between the alarmist clique and Nature, among other journals, in the Climategate emails.
And yes, Nature has in fact put politics far above science. I take it that your first language is not English, so I’ll give a partial pass. But your reading comprehension should be better. Try reading the article and commenrts again, this time with an open mind. You will begin to see the seriousness of the problem.
For a good example of the corruption endemic to climate science journals, see this article. Journals have become even more politicized since then. Now, with Nature’s pal review of the easily deconstructed Shakun paper, it is clear that Nature has an anti-science political agenda.
If anything should rest in peace…it’s Patrick’s scientific credibility.
I have three comments:
Your views are very controversial and you hear less about this in the news, scientists are also subject to bribery and immensely influenced by their funding source. I’d like to know the funding sources of the author of the post as well as the authors of the Nature paper.
I think the author seems arrogant and immensely biased towards his views and although there were 13 authors in the Nature paper, i think it shows support from LEADING researchers in the field and gives the paper more credibility.
As a future PhD in Chemistry academic, I thought the point of a reviewer and scientist is to allow the data to lead the discussion objectively…not reading a paper knowing you will shred it apart.
I wanted to know if the increase in fossil fuel consumption correlating to longer lifetimes is like longer lifetimes correlating with the universe’s red shift. It is also misleading because it sound as if the leaking of green house gases into the automosphere promotes our healthcare? That just sounds absurd. If you are implying that fossil fuel, through fostering industrial production, manufacturing, and research, promoted indirectly longer lifetime, i might agree with you…with a huge grain of salt.
It’s people like Patrick which motivates me to work my tail off in school and replace stubborn, biased, and misled resarchers like him. Instead of facilitating our understanding of climate change, Patrick is just a gigantic road block.
@BalconyThoughts:
This article is about corruption in the pal-reviewed journal Science. However, you have turned your comments into an ad hominem attack. That is because you are a very young know-nothing lacking supportable facts, whereas Dr. Michaels has been the target of know-nothings because he is very effective and knowledgeable. And the facts [which you will not address] are in his article.
Speaking of the stubborn, biased and misled, look in the mirror. You have been spoon-fed alarmist propaganda for so long that you cannot see that none of it stands up to the scientific method. The entire CAGW scare is based on the demonization of “carbon”. In fact, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial. Show us where it has caused any global harm; and try to keep the scientific method in mind: examples must be based on testable, reproducible, and verifiable evidence, not computer models.
ThoughtsFromMyBalcony says ad homs and nonsense.
The pre-1970 aerosol data used in this paper is literally fabricated “from thin air”.
You cannot demonstrate anything from this fatally flawed approach.
Here is proof – assume different aerosol data and you will get a different result.
The prinicipal use of the charcoal was almost exclusively for production of high quality steel for weapons and armour.
I’m afraid you are wrong. Charcoal was the fuel used by blacksmiths. In pre-industrial Europe every village of any size would have had a blacksmith, usually referred to as a smith. Which is why Smith is the commonest name amongst people of English heritage.
If “anthropogenic aerosols” have such a profound effect on the Atlantic, why wouldn’t they have the same effect on the Pacific?
The Pacific is much bigger and ENSO is the main driver of Pacific SSTs.
You can see the effect of the mid-1990s SE Asia smogs on Eastern Pacific SSTs..
http://i34.tinypic.com/5tx6qg.jpg
Otherwise, we have a much clearer picture of how aerosols have changed over N America and Europe over the 20th C, than over Asia. I suspect we don’t have enough data to a Pacific analysis.
Even if this paper is ****, it should still be welcomed because it claims GHGs are not the primary driver of the AMO and by implication a proportion of the 20thC climate change.
The use of the term ‘dirty pollution’ is laughable. As opposed to what, clean pollution?, dirty non-pollution? The reason for the term is that having labelled CO2 as pollution, they need some way to refer to real pollution, hence dirty pollution.
Allan MacRae:
At April 12, 2012 at 7:10 pm you rightly say;
“ThoughtsFromMyBalcony says ad homs and nonsense.
The pre-1970 aerosol data used in this paper is literally fabricated “from thin air”.
You cannot demonstrate anything from this fatally flawed approach.
Here is proof – assume different aerosol data and you will get a different result.”
YES!
Clearly the troll posting as ThoughtsFromMyBalcony did not read the thread in the link you provided in your post at April 12, 2012 at 3:47 am; viz.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/02/aerosol-sat-observations-and-climate-models-differ-by-a-factor-of-three-to-six/#comment-711396
And the posts from Philip Bradley demonstrate that he, too, is unaware that each climate model uses completely fabricated aerosol data.
One of my comments which you cite seems germane so I copy it here because ThoughtsFromMyBalcony and Philip Bradley have clearly found it too difficult to find in the link.
Richard
_______________________________
Richard S Courtney says:
August 2, 2011 at 6:46 am
Friends:
The article quotes Penner saying:
“The satellite estimates are way too small,” said Joyce Penner, the Ralph J. Cicerone Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric Science. “There are things about the global model that should fit the satellite data but don’t, so I won’t argue that the models necessarily are correct. But we’ve explained why satellite estimates and the models are so different.”
Hmmm. Let us consider what we know about how the models incorporate climate sensitivity and aerosol effects.
None of the models – not one of them – could match the change in mean global temperature over the past century if it did not utilise a unique value of assumed cooling from aerosols. So, inputting actual values of the cooling effect (such as the determination by Penner et al.) would make every climate model provide a mismatch of the global warming it hindcasts and the observed global warming for the twentieth century.
This mismatch would occur because all the global climate models and energy balance models are known to provide indications which are based on
1.
the assumed degree of forcings resulting from human activity that produce warming
and
2.
the assumed degree of anthropogenic aerosol cooling input to each model as a ‘fiddle factor’ to obtain agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature.
More than a decade ago I published a peer-reviewed paper that showed the UK’s Hadley Centre general circulation model (GCM) could not model climate and only obtained agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature by forcing the agreement with an input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
And my paper demonstrated that the assumption of aerosol effects being responsible for the model’s failure was incorrect.
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
More recently, in 2007, Kiehle published a paper that assessed 9 GCMs and two energy balance models.
(ref. Kiehl JT,Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity. GRL vol.. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007).
Kiehl found the same as my paper except that each model he assessed used a different aerosol ‘fix’ from every other model.
He says in his paper:
”One curious aspect of this result is that it is also well known [Houghton et al., 2001] that the same models that agree in simulating the anomaly in surface air temperature differ significantly in their predicted climate sensitivity. The cited range in climate sensitivity from a wide collection of models is usually 1.5 to 4.5 deg C for a doubling of CO2, where most global climate models used for climate change studies vary by at least a factor of two in equilibrium sensitivity.
The question is: if climate models differ by a factor of 2 to 3 in their climate sensitivity, how can they all simulate the global temperature record with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Kerr [2007] and S. E. Schwartz et al. (Quantifying climate change–too rosy a picture?, available at http://www.nature.com/reports/climatechange, 2007) recently pointed out the importance of understanding the answer to this question. Indeed, Kerr [2007] referred to the present work and the current paper provides the ‘‘widely circulated analysis’’ referred to by Kerr [2007]. This report investigates the most probable explanation for such an agreement. It uses published results from a wide variety of model simulations to understand this apparent paradox between model climate responses for the 20th century, but diverse climate model sensitivity.”
And, importantly, Kiehl’s paper says:
”These results explain to a large degree why models with such diverse climate sensitivities can all simulate the global anomaly in surface temperature. The magnitude of applied anthropogenic total forcing compensates for the model sensitivity.”
And the “magnitude of applied anthropogenic total forcing” is fixed in each model by the input value of aerosol forcing.
Thanks to Bill Illis, Kiehl’s Figure 2 can be seen at
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/8167/kiehl2007figure2.png ]
Please note that the Figure is for 9 GCMs and 2 energy balance models, and its title is:
”Figure 2. Total anthropogenic forcing (Wm2) versus aerosol forcing (Wm2) from nine fully coupled climate models and two energy balance models used to simulate the 20th century.”
It shows that
(a) each model uses a different value for “Total anthropogenic forcing” that is in the range 0.80 W/m^-2 to 2.02 W/m^-2
but
(b) each model is forced to agree with the rate of past warming by using a different value for “Aerosol forcing” that is in the range -1.42 W/m^-2 to -0.60 W/m^-2.
In other words the models use values of “Total anthropogenic forcing” that differ by a factor of more than 2.5 and they are ‘adjusted’ by using values of assumed “Aerosol forcing” that differ by a factor of 2.4.
In summation, all the model projections of future climate change are blown out of the water by the findings of Penner at al.
Richard
Excellent comments Richard – thank you.
Here is another earlier post on this subject, dating from mid-2009.
It is remarkable that this obvious global warming fraud has lasted this long, with supporting aerosol data literally “made up from thin air”.
Using real measured aerosol data that dates to the 1880’s, the phony global warming crisis “disappears in a puff of smoke”.
Best person regards, Allan
_____________
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/new-paper-global-dimming-and-brightening-a-review/#comment-151040
Allan MacRae (03:23:07) ~28/06/2009 [excerpt]
FABRICATION OF AEROSOL DATA USED FOR CLIMATE MODELS:
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and in other in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
___________________________
Repeating: “In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly.”
___________________________
Here is an email just received from Douglas Hoyt [my comments in square brackets]:
It [aerosol numbers used in climate models] comes from the modelling work of Charlson where total aerosol optical depth is modeled as being proportional to industrial activity.
[For example, the 1992 paper in Science by Charlson, Hansen et al]
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/255/5043/423
or [the 2000 letter report to James Baker from Hansen and Ramaswamy]
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:DjVCJ3s0PeYJ:www-nacip.ucsd.edu/Ltr-Baker.pdf+%22aerosol+optical+depth%22+time+dependence&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
where it says [para 2 of covering letter] “aerosols are not measured with an accuracy that allows determination of even the sign of annual or decadal trends of aerosol climate forcing.”
Let’s turn the question on its head and ask to see the raw measurements of atmospheric transmission that support Charlson.
Hint: There aren’t any, as the statement from the workshop above confirms.
__________________________
IN SUMMARY
There are actual measurements by Hoyt and others that show NO trends in atmospheric aerosols, but volcanic events are clearly evident.
So Charlson, Hansen et al ignored these inconvenient aerosol measurements and “cooked up” (fabricated) aerosol data that forced their climate models to better conform to the global cooling that was observed pre~1975.
Voila! Their models could hindcast (model the past) better using this fabricated aerosol data, and therefore (falsely claim to) predict the future with accuracy.
That is the evidence of fabrication of the aerosol data used in climate models that (falsely) predict catastrophic humanmade global warming.
And we are going to spend trillions and cripple our Western economies based on this fabrication of false data, this model cooking, this nonsense?
*************************************************
Smokey says:
April 12, 2012 at 6:18 pm
____________________________
……..”Hockey stick itself: the R2 number was so low as to suggest that the hockey stick had no meaning at all, although another statistic, the reduction of error statistic (or RE) was relatively high. It was only this latter figure that had been mentioned in the paper. In other words, far from confirming the scientific integrity of the hockey stick, Wahl and Amman’s work confirmed McIntyre’s criticisms of it! McIntyre’s first action as a peer reviewer was therefore to request from Wahl and Amman the verification statistics for their replication of the stick. Confirmation that the R2 was close to zero would strike a serious blow at Wahl and Amman’s work. ………………….Amman once again prevaricated……..”
In the circumstances, I still think the games would never end.
I am so inclined about the subject. Thank you for submitting the true story.
richardscourtney says:
April 13, 2012 at 1:55 am
And the posts from Philip Bradley demonstrate that he, too, is unaware that each climate model uses completely fabricated aerosol data.
I am well aware that aerosols are used as a fiddle factor in the models and have observed that fact many times here.
Using aerosols as a fiddle factor in the models is not evidence for or against real aerosol effects on the climate. I could cite numerous examples of aerosol effects on climate over all timescales where we have data, from the Weekend Effect thru the effect of the mid 90s SE Asia smog to the developed world and India aerosol emissions over the 20thC.
I’l note that several comments above equate (claimed) absence of evidence with evidence of absence, which of course its not.