From the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
“Warming hole” delayed climate change over eastern United States
April 26, 2012
50-year model suggests regional pollution obscured a global trend
CONTACT: Caroline Perry, (617) 496-1351
Cambridge, Mass. – April 26, 2012 – Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States—that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.
While greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warm the Earth’s surface, tiny particles in the air can have the reverse effect on regional scales.
“What we’ve shown is that particulate pollution over the eastern United States has delayed the warming that we would expect to see from increasing greenhouse gases,” says lead author Eric Leibensperger (Ph.D. ’11), who completed the work as a graduate student in applied physics at SEAS.
“For the sake of protecting human health and reducing acid rain, we’ve now cut the emissions that lead to particulate pollution,” he adds, “but these cuts have caused the greenhouse warming in this region to ramp up to match the global trend.”
At this point, most of the “catch-up” warming has already occurred.
The findings, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, present a more complete picture of the processes that affect regional climate change. The work also carries significant implications for the future climate of industrial nations, like China, that have not yet implemented air quality regulations to the same extent as the United States.
Observed change in surface air temperature between 1930 and 1990. Observations are from the NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. Image courtesy of Eric Leibensperger.
Until the United States passed the Clean Air Act in 1970 and strengthened it in 1990, particulate pollution hung thick over the central and eastern states. Most of these particles in the atmosphere were made of sulfate, originating as sulfur emissions from coal-fired power plants. Compared to greenhouse gases, particulate pollution has a very short lifetime (about 1 week), so its distribution over the Earth is uneven.
“The primary driver of the warming hole is the aerosol pollution—these small particles,” says Leibensperger. “What they do is reflect incoming sunlight, so we see a cooling effect at the surface.”
This effect has been known for some time, but the new analysis demonstrates the strong impact that decreases in particulate pollution can have on regional climate.
The researchers found that interactions between clouds and particles amplified the cooling. Particles of pollution can act as nucleation sites for cloud droplets, which can in turn reflect even more sunlight than the particles would individually, leading to greater cooling at the surface.
The researchers’ analysis is based on a combination of two complex models of Earth systems. The pollution data comes from the GEOS-Chem model, which was first developed at Harvard and, through a series of many updates, has since become an international standard for modeling pollution over time. The climate data comes from the general circulation model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Both models are rooted in decades’ worth of observational data.
Since the early 20th century, global mean temperatures have risen—by approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius from 1906 to 2005—but in the U.S. “warming hole,” temperatures decreased by as much as 1 degree Celsius during the period 1930–1990. U.S. particulate pollution peaked in 1980 and has since been reduced by about half. By 2010 the average cooling effect over the East had fallen to just 0.3 degrees Celsius.
“Such a large fraction of the sulfate has already been removed that we don’t have much more warming coming along due to further controls on sulfur emissions in the future,” says principal investigator Daniel Jacob, the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at SEAS.
Jacob is also a Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard and a faculty associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
Besides confirming that particulate pollution plays a large role in affecting U.S. regional climate, the research emphasizes the importance of accounting for the climate impacts of particulates in future air quality policies.
“Something similar could happen in China, which is just beginning to tighten up its pollution standards,” says co-author Loretta J. Mickley, a Senior Research Fellow in atmospheric chemistry at SEAS. “China could see significant climate change due to declining levels of particulate pollutants.”
Sulfates are harmful to human health and can also cause acid rain, which damages ecosystems and erodes buildings.
“No one is suggesting that we should stop improving air quality, but it’s important to understand the consequences. Clearing the air could lead to regional warming,” Mickley says.
Leibensperger, Jacob, and Mickley were joined by co-authors Wei-Ting Chen and John H. Seinfeld (California Institute of Technology); Athanasios Nenes (Georgia Institute of Technology); Peter J. Adams (Carnegie Mellon University); David G. Streets (Argonne National Laboratory); Naresh Kumar (Electric Power Research Institute); and David Rind (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies).
The research was supported by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); neither EPRI nor the EPA has officially endorsed the results. The work also benefited from resources provided by Academic Computing Services at SEAS.
There’s a hole in their models all right.
This should be good for a juicy grant.
This is interesting in basically they are saying global cooling was/is real and the recent warming is the result/mostly the result of actions taken to fight global cooling and thus meaning that global warming is wrong…
Should be interesting how the info is spun at least.
The temperature changes of the US do not support this hypothesis at all, The sulphates were dropped from the 50’s to the 70’s and then again in the mid-80’s. There has been almost no warming since the 90’s.
Another model study based on speculation.
DocMartyn points out a really glaring problem.
Additionally, “At this point, most of the “catch-up” warming has already occurred.” doesn’t fare very well when you note all the data manipulation of the historical record.
“Already occurred” how? By tweaking the data points? Or is that from unadulterated info?
Garbage In => Garbage Out.
“Fig. 9. 1950–2050 trends in annual mean surface air temperatures over the mid-Atlantic US (boxed region in Fig. 2). Observa- tions (GISTEMP) are compared to the control simulation including greenhouse and aerosol forcings and to the sensitivity simulation with no US anthropogenic aerosols.”
A control simulation!
This is a bunch of hooey and BS. The “regional cooling” extended to the entire 48 lower US according to NCDC records, and the trend for the entire US was down -.74F/.41C using the thirty year mean starting in 1981, with the period of record being 2001 to 2011. This trend is also negative using a 100 year mean.
How believable is it that over the entire year that aerosols, especially in very unpopulated areas would be causing a downward trend in temperature with the amount of wind and convection that would cover all areas? This just isn’t.credible.
Perhaps the good professor needs to look at the way he and his colleagues calculate radiative forcing. In the presence of water vapor and a hydrological cycle it is absurd to only look at what infrared was absorbed at the particular wavenumber that corresponds to the concentration increases of constituents like CO2. The spectrally integrated outgoing longwave radiation is the only relevant comparison of an absorbing constituent to determine if anything has actually changed in the OLR, and if these guys actually took the time to try and determine this, I would bet there would be the big boogey man of truth waiting for them to confirm to them that CO2 and the other GHG’s are not causing the climate to change or reducing the OLR.
Nothing about this makes any sense.
Nope!
From 1930 to 1980 the “Ohio Valley Region” cooled at a rate of -0.44 degF / Decade.
From 1980 to 1998 the “Ohio Valley Region” warmed at a rate of 0.33 degF / Decade.
From 1998 to 2010 the “Ohio Valley Region” cooled at a rate of -1.23 degF / Decade.
Oh oh …. that ruins this theory, unless they think aerosols increased by a massive amount after 1998.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/ce.html
That region has been cooling since 1900.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/cooling-since-1900/
The west coast of the US / Canada has been cooling since the mid 1980s.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/westcoast-cooling-overlayed-on-google-maps/
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/west-coast-has-been-cooling-since-1983-2/
I never thought I’d say it, but I’m getting sick of models.
Pointman
I am all for clean air. One thing that most people do not realize is heavy air pollution can block UVB sunlight that we need to produce vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D is very important to controlling or preventing asthma. They saw the dirty air causes asthma but apparently they never made the connection between asthma and vitamin D deficiency. EPA claims that dirty air pollution directly causes asthma but it’s not so simple…
Making it up as they go along.
Friday: The reason it’s so hot is because of AGW!
Monday: The reason it wasn’t so hot when we said it was is because of AGW!
“The pollution data comes from the GEOS-Chem model,.. The climate data comes from the general circulation model…”
It’s not actually ‘data’ if it’s just the results of a model.
So their claim is that the temperature drop in northern Mexico, and New Mexico, is because of aerosols?
Egads … usually it’s models all the way down, but this seems to be blind folks all the way down.
w.
Anything that has the Goddard Institute for Climate Propaganda involved in it can be dismissed out of hand as junk science.
Looks like another attempt to explain away natural cycle in climate.
Next we will hear that this is applied to Europe as well and the naughty particles just tricked scientists into making exaggerated estimates of AGW , fooled by the reduced air pollution.
From Jevrejeve 2008 examining sea level change rate.
http://i40.tinypic.com/nx3q1.png
The cycles have been diminishing in amplitude since 1800. That could be linked tenuously to increasing GHG (including water vapour) dampening variation.
don’t see it spring back since 1990.
I’m relieved to know that the notorious air pollution we experienced in the 40s and 50s had no effect on our regional temperature. Perhaps it was really just an urban myth…
John in Southern Cal
I thought the premise of Climate Change was regional pollution.
“The researchers’ analysis is based on a combination of two complex models of Earth systems.”
So let’s see here; a model is used to explain why warming predicted by a second model has not occurred.
There’s a classic quote that can be used to explain what’s going on here.
“Its models all the way down”
I noticed the mention of acid rain in the article and I needed to point out something.
I live in AZ. and have had swimming pools for 16 years of different shapes and sizes. It doesn’t rain much in AZ so its a noticeable event. Everytime it rains (for the last 16 years) I must ADD ACID to my swimming pools in order to lower the PH to the recommended level of 7-7.5. Today it rained again and because I read this article and was curious I took the PH of the rain puddles on my deck and walkways and in the garden, all three puddles had a PH of 7.8 or higher.
I looked up PH of rain on the internet and all the articles I read listed it as around 5.5 or lower, this does not jive with my 16 years of experience with swimming pools and adding acid. I would be curious if anyone else has noticed similar results.
Nerd says:
April 26, 2012 at 4:43 pm
I am all for clean air…..
__________________________
All of us are for clean air and not fouling our own nest. However CO2 is a plant fertilizer and thank goodness we are returning the CO2 that was locked up back into the biosphere. The plants love it.
“but in the U.S. “warming hole,” temperatures decreased by as much as 1 degree Celsius during the period 1930–1990. ”
Wait a minute. Aren’t they being dishonest by claiming the cooling stopped in 1990 when it stopped in 1980 and started again in 1998 — at least in the NOAA OHIO VALLEY REGION?
They are desperate to link up the warming with the 1990 extension of the clean air act.
“Ignore the pea up my sleeve … tell me which cup it is under.”
“The researchers found that interactions between clouds and particles amplified the cooling. Particles of pollution can act as nucleation sites for cloud droplets, which can in turn reflect even more sunlight than the particles would individually, leading to greater cooling at the surface.”
Interesting, so Svenmark’s cosmic ray nucleation would presumably have a similar effect.
I suspect the real sulfuric acid aerosols have not declined as much as is postulated and the plume is located over the mid Atlantic states downwind of most of the power plants that are still burning high sulfur coal. Some power plants with scrubbers are actually producing “blue mist” sulfuric acid that hangs in the atmosphere longer than SO2. We in North Carolina are still getting it from TVA. Is there even a network for measuring sulfuric acid arosols that can be used to check the model?
It’s good to know that the science is settled.
/snark
Without doing heaps of analysis: the first thing they do is presume warming should be there when it isn’t – why do they do this…..because a model says it should be there. They then use a different model to explain why the results of the first model were wrong. Lets just assume that they are right about this – so how does that translate to (say) the problem that the antarctic or indeed southern hemisphere is not warming as much as the arctic/northern hemisphere? Generally One might assume that this was occurring because of increased anthropogenic emissions in the Northern Hemisphere. But..then that would give the opposite effect of the one they postulate.
GlynnMhor says:
April 26, 2012 at 4:50 pm
“The pollution data comes from the GEOS-Chem model,.. The climate data comes from the general circulation model…”
It’s not actually ‘data’ if it’s just the results of a model.
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OH, My Goodness no, Didn’t you see what they said?
They are talking about observational data like this: Hansen’s temp graphs 1999, 2001, & 2008
Where to begin. Buy whatever journal this was published in and use it to line your bird cage.
“The researchers found that interactions between clouds and particles amplified the cooling. Particles of pollution can act as nucleation sites for cloud droplets, which can in turn reflect even more sunlight than the particles would individually, leading to greater cooling at the surface.
The researchers’ analysis is based on a combination of two complex models of Earth systems… The climate data comes from the general circulation model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. ”
So it was not “climate data ” at all. It was model output data. What “the researchers found” was what was programmed into the model. That hardly a scientific discovery , they could have asked to look at the code.
“No one is suggesting that we should stop improving air quality, but it’s important to understand the consequences. Clearing the air could lead to regional warming,”
So is he suggesting both are evil, but one is the lesser of the two evils?
Gail, they may have “rooted” their models in data, but they’re still running models.
Epicycles… they finally have gotten to epicycles. This should just get better and better. Popcorn futures, folks!
Unfortunately, the aerosol optical physics in the models is wrong. Sulphate pollution reduces cloud albedo by switching off droplet coarsening. it’s the rain clouds which reflect most light.
(I really wish I could post these photos)
It seems the Dust bowl of the 1930’s must have cause really frigid weather…NOT.
I am sure the climate scientist would explain that the dust storms were only local.
Hansen’s graph of US temps: http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif
Shorter: Evil pollution needs to be stopped so we can see the affects of evil pollution.
Nerd says:
April 26, 2012 at 4:43 pm
“I am all for clean air. One thing that most people do not realize is heavy air pollution can block UVB sunlight that we need to produce vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D is very important to controlling or preventing asthma.”
Here in Germany there’s about 6 months of “polar winter”, meaning the sun does not rise up enough, its UVB rays have to penetrate too much air to actually reach the surface and get mostly deflected, so you can’t get enough of them to synthesize meaningful amounts of vitamin D. Of course in Scandinavia it’s even worse.
I guess the latitude you live at has a much bigger influence on the availability of UVB than pollution has. In the EU, sun banks don’t help; the EU commission has ordered that they have to have UVB filters. You get tanned but you get no Vitamin D. Their reason for this was that UVB also causes skin cancer.
My personal solution is Vitamin pils and fatty fish. Herring and Mackarel mostly.
My Personal Theory is the air pollution has been decently heavy for the past ~130ish years over the eastern US which helped keep the temps down yet it was pretty stable in its coverage so that the natural variation came into play for the temps, then in the 70’s we started to clean the air via clean air act, and the air got cleaner…thus allowing more sun to hit the planet, thus warming the planet temporarily overriding the long term natural variation in temps, bringing the planet up to the temps that were supposed to be at if their was minimal air pollution. the natural variation is now taking over as the world temp reached where it was supposed to be at with the temps fluctuating up and down in ~30 year cycles……that is my rough hypothesis, but what do i know i’m just a civil engineer 🙂
The US temperature trend has been adjusted upwards by +0.612C now in the new USHCN Version 3.
One cannot go back and say the the temperatures were affected by aerosols or whatever because no one knows what the true temperature trend is.
M Hastings says:
April 26, 2012 at 4:58 pm
“I looked up PH of rain on the internet and all the articles I read listed it as around 5.5 or lower, this does not jive with my 16 years of experience with swimming pools and adding acid. I would be curious if anyone else has noticed similar results.”
Trees cause acidic rain. No kidding. In other words, the water in forest creeks should be that acidic.
Reagan was in a way right when he said that ““trees cause more pollution than automobiles do”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/new-study-confirms-that-nature-is-responsible-for-90-of-the-earths-atmospheric-acidity/
Whew, I feel so much better knowing that …
I don’t get it. They have data on historical temperatures. Why do they need the climate model? Seems like a bog-standard regression of the GEOS-Chem model against actual temperatures would be preferable …
w.
Rob Crawford says:
April 26, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Gail, they may have “rooted” their models in data, but they’re still running models.
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ROb, look at the graph I included of Hansen’s temperature “Data” that this study is “based on” http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif
(Don’t bust a gut laughing)
More non-sense from pseudo-scientists with their freshly minted PhD’s and their modern Marxist world view.
“Cambridge, Mass. – April 26, 2012 – Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States—that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.”
I’m confused.
CO2 is pollution that causes AGW and particulates are pollution that stops it. ???
And, if they’re right, shouldn’t they call it a “cooling hole”? Or does saying something is cooling throw a wet blanket on all the warming rhetoric?
Really…….surely it’s just a case of ground control to Major Leibensperger?
I’ve been fond of saying that “nothing is as dangerous to our economy, our liberties and our lifestyles as a Harvard educated lawyer or a Harvard educated economist”. Looks like I’ll need to add Harvard educated scientist to that list as well.
M Hastings says:
“I live in AZ. and have had swimming pools for 16 years of different shapes and sizes. It doesn’t rain much in AZ so its a noticeable event. Everytime it rains (for the last 16 years) I must ADD ACID to my swimming pools in order to lower the PH to the recommended level of 7-7.5. Today it rained again and because I read this article and was curious I took the PH of the rain puddles on my deck and walkways and in the garden, all three puddles had a PH of 7.8 or higher.
I looked up PH of rain on the internet and all the articles I read listed it as around 5.5 or lower, this does not jive with my 16 years of experience with swimming pools and adding acid. I would be curious if anyone else has noticed similar results.”
AZ is a dry dusty place most of the time. Clean rain normally has a pH of around 5.5 because it is in equilibrium with the atmospheric concentration of CO2. The dust in AZ raises the pH to what you observe. Concrete also does it. Western coal is low sulfur and I don’t think you are getting any sulfuric acid aerosol from over the mountains to your west.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 26, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Whew, I feel so much better knowing that …
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Willis, I find it very interesting that they would put in the sentence “Both models are rooted in decades’ worth of observational data.”
I guess they must have noticed “Deniers” have been laughing at any studies based on models as “Data” Perhaps a tiny step in the correct direction. Of course using models with well massaged and pureed data is still laughable even if the model is supposedly “rooted in decades’ worth of observational data.”
DesertYote says:
April 26, 2012 at 5:34 pm
More non-sense from pseudo-scientists with their freshly minted PhD’s and their modern Marxist world view.
___________________________
What do you expect? It’s Haaavard. (I used to live close to Harvard.)
This does not say much for the Harvard Engineering school.
Pitiful plumb pitiful.
“Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences”
Harvard is the same school that graduated B.H.O.; thus anything come out of Harvard should be duly questioned – if not outright dismissed…
Gunga Din says:
April 26, 2012 at 5:38 pm
I’m confused.
CO2 is pollution that causes AGW and particulates are pollution that stops it. ???
And, if they’re right, shouldn’t they call it a “cooling hole”? Or does saying something is cooling throw a wet blanket on all the warming rhetoric?
___________________________________
They mean a “hole” in the warming trend. (I think)
The nonsense continues. Many people speculated that the alarmist crowd would try and shift blame to particulates for the absence of warming…and here they go. Nothing wrong with the climate models. It’s the particulates that we didn’t take into account. Send more money.
this is the MSM flavour of the day in Australia:
27 April: Science Mag: Ocean Salinities Reveal Strong Global Water Cycle Intensification During 1950 to 2000
Paul J. Durack, Susan E. Wijffels, Richard J. Matear
Fundamental thermodynamics and climate models suggest that dry regions will become drier and wet regions will become wetter in response to warming…
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6080/455.abstract
[SNIP: How one person can violate so many site rules in two short sentences is a veritable wonder. -REP]
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
I suspect the dog may have eaten their homework!
Yes, because of *course* there were tons of particulates coming from Arkansas and Missouri…right? Beuller?
Oh look more computer models. I say this as a computer scientists. Models are useless for the kind of predictions and analysis presented in the article.
My home in Canada is an hour north of Toronto, back yard is the Niagra Escarpment and the Nottawasaga River. When I moved there in the 80’s I tried to grow acid loving plants and failed. I checked the PH of the soil. It was 8. I checked the PH of the river water. It was 8.5. Why? Road salt. I even checked the PH of falling rain, not touching anything. It was a touch over 7. I was praying for acid rain. This was in a heavily forested area.
Pamela Gray says: “Where to begin. Buy whatever journal this was published in and use it to line your bird cage.”
Pamela, I have a stack of Seth Borenstein articles stacked up for Tweetie to poop on. A friend says I can have his promo copy of Michael Mann’s book. I probably won’t need any more liners.
Obviously, the way to combat global warming is to remove all the pollution controls that were enacted in the 70″s.
erik sloneker says:
April 26, 2012 at 5:42 pm
I’ve been fond of saying that “nothing is as dangerous to our economy, our liberties and our lifestyles as a Harvard educated lawyer or a Harvard educated economist”. Looks like I’ll need to add Harvard educated scientist to that list as well.
______________________________
I have seen a Haaavad Business School grad just about kill a company. He had a great bottom line for the two years he was there and all the deferred maintenance did not hit until after he left to go on to ruin another business. (happened at two different companies with different harvard grads)
You just can’t make stories like this up! No, wait, they already did…
M Hastings says:
April 26, 2012 at 4:58 pm
“I looked up PH of rain on the internet and all the articles I read listed it as around 5.5 or lower, this does not jive with my 16 years of experience with swimming pools and adding acid. I would be curious if anyone else has noticed similar results.”
________________
If you could find absolutley pure H2O, it’s pH would be 7. Water has been called the universal solvent. It will dissolve a little bit of just about everything. Rain would dissolve CO2 and other gases as it fell through the air. Rain with the CO2 it picked up would form a bit of carbonic acid and so lower the pH. But the alkalinity would be very, very low.
Don’t confuse “alkalinity” with “alkaline”. Water that is alkaline has a pH above 7. “Alkalinity” refers to water’s ability to resist a change in pH due to other things it has dissoved in it that will “use up” the acid (or caustic) before they can cause the pH to change.
Take two glasses with the same amount of distilled water and record the pH.
Now dissolve a tiny amount of baking soda one glass. Record it’s pH.
Add one drop of vinegar into the other glass of distilled water. Record it’s pH.
Now add one drop of vinegar into the glass with the baking soda. Record it’s pH.
What you should see (if this test I just made up on the fly works) is that the pH of both glasses dropped when you added the vinegar BUT the pH of the glass with baking soda did not drop as much. (The baking soda glass may not have changed at all.) That’s because when you added the baking soda, you added alkainity. The acid in the vinegar would have to “use up” the baking soda before it could raise the hydrogen ion concentration (pH).
With a swimming pool (and I’m no expert and i don’t have one) you’re probably adding some form of chlorine, some type of clarifier, a buffer and maybe other things. (Aside from the people using it and what they might add.) They can effect the pH AND alkalinity of the water. As the pool water gets warmer, it will release gases. Some of those gases, like CO2 and Cl2, had formed an acid. Lose the gas, lose the acid. (And Cl2 will also not be available to form an acid as is does it’s job as a disinfectant.)
Is that clear as mud?
I’m sure there are people here that know more and understand more about this than I do that might be able to explain it better.
Particulates have been reduced dramatically over the last several decades…I’m not an atmospheric scientist, but the chemist in me suggests that the effective half life for these particles should be low…most would be washed out during precipitation….just my sawg…
Since the early 20th century, global mean temperatures have risen—by approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius from 1906 to 2005—but in the U.S. “warming hole,” temperatures decreased by as much as 1 degree Celsius during the period 1930–1990. U.S. particulate pollution peaked in 1980 and has since been reduced by about half. By 2010 the average cooling effect over the East had fallen to just 0.3 degrees Celsius.
Very confusingly written, perhaps deliberately so, but in substance correct.
The global land surface warming since the 1970s is substantially a decreased aerosol effect. What happened in the USA, happened in the rest of developed world and the ex Soviet Union post 1991. And contrary to popular myth aerosol levels have also decreased across large parts of the developing world.
Note how they avoid stating that reduced particulates has resulted in 0.7C warming since around 1980, the same amount of measured warming that has occured on a global basis since the 1970s.
SInce our weather generally moves from west to set, how do they figure the greatest cooling effect to be over Missouri and Arkansas so far west? This makes no sense at all. I am totally unaware that our industrial centers are in the southern Midwest. I lived in Iowa for 17 years from 1978 to 1995 and in my travels missed ALL of the manufacturing.
Oh, good! A study that points out that it was warm in 1930!
They got all their data from their famous huge fleet of weather balloons that have been operating in the tens of thousands for ‘decades’ over the entire US, providing not only meteorological observations at multiple altitudes every 20 km but a complete aerosol profile with optical and thermal IR transmittance as well. From this mountain of ‘research’ they ‘discovered’ the CO2 countering effects of all those aerosols. They reccommend doubling the number of balloons.
SARC ! !!!!!!!!!
fhhaynie on April 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm said:
I suspect the real sulfuric acid aerosols have not declined as much as is postulated and the plume is located over the mid Atlantic states downwind of most of the power plants that are still burning high sulfur coal. Some power plants with scrubbers are actually producing “blue mist” sulfuric acid that hangs in the atmosphere longer than SO2. We in North Carolina are still getting it from TVA. Is there even a network for measuring sulfuric acid arosols that can be used to check the model?”<i
Oops, finger slip.
fhhaynie on April 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm said:
I suspect the real sulfuric acid aerosols have not declined as much as is postulated and the plume is located over the mid Atlantic states downwind of most of the power plants that are still burning high sulfur coal. Some power plants with scrubbers are actually producing “blue mist” sulfuric acid that hangs in the atmosphere longer than SO2. We in North Carolina are still getting it from TVA. Is there even a network for measuring sulfuric acid arosols that can be used to check the model?”</i
Does this have a parallel to retograde motion?
This study has as much credence as the hypothesis that CFCs “caused” the “ozone hole”. No evidence outside the lab for the former, the “hole” isn’t a hole, and Dobson and others were measuring low ozone levels inside BOTH polar circles in the 1950s.
Model output used as input to another model, result is confirmation of AGW. A warning on the box “may contain traces of data” could result in a claim of exaggeration and possible legal action.
When and dwhere do these people get off? When the funding stops?
This is childrens’ thinking.
And for those who are sceptical that aerosols can affect the climate by the amount claimed there is the Weekend Effect, where temperatures change by around 0.5C in a regular weekly cycle. Almost certainly an aerosol effect.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/09/17/947631.htm
The article talks about particulate sulfates which are reflective. In China, my impression was that black carbon predominated in the “Asian brown cloud”. Ramanathan’s “Indian Ocean Experiment” noted that black carbon/soot had a powerful warming effect–up to 60 times as much as CO2. Even though the particles fall out in a couple of weeks, they’re constantly replenished. If China cleans up the airborne soot they should notice a cooling.
Hey, if “Particulates” offset CO2, then shouldn’t Sierra Club’s Particulate Office have a word with Sierra Club’s CO2 Office? There could be a synergy here.
Face palm…
M Hastings
April 26, 2012 at 4:58 pm
####
Before I add to the answers you have already received, I want to compliment you on thinking like a scientist and going out to collect your own data.
I’m an Arizonan and a semi-professional fresh-water ecologist. I spent a lot of time with my trusty Hatch measuring every body of water I came across. I make my living as an engineer specializing in test and measurement. I love measuring things, don’t care to much about what the results prove or disprove, just how accurate they are.
Your water samples were contaminated by the Cool-deck and concrete. The concrete used in walkways is particularly leechy. To measure rainwater, you would need to capture some in a clean container. You will find that your springtime PH will be around 7.3 to 7.5. There is a lot of dust in the air that the rain washes out. Once the monsoon gets rolling, the PH will fall to 6.8 to 7.2 if it is not proceeded by dust storms. In such cases, I have measured PH up to 7.8!
The ground water, depending on were you live will be 7.3 to 7.8 during the winter. In the summer time it will be 8.2 to 8.5, yes higher the seawater. In the desert areas most ground water is between 7.8 and 8.2. The more organic stuff going on, the lower the PH.
BTW, when getting a sample from your pool, you should be pulling it from a foot under the surface.
A good titration test kit for amateurs, that I find to be reliable is the one marketed by TetraTech that is available in most Aquarium stores. Its more accurate then the ones used for pool maintenance. Now go forth and measure.
Richard Feynman explains the scientific method:
1st you guess
2nd you compute the consequences of that guess
3rd you compare those computations against the real world.
Conclusion: If 2 and 3 do not match, You are wrong. Period.
http://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw
ThumbWind says:
April 26, 2012 at 6:12 pm
[SNIP: How one person can violate so many site rules in two short sentences is a veritable wonder. -REP]
——————————–
O, COME ON NOW! Pleeeez! That we have to see!
“The climate data comes from the general circulation model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Both models are rooted in decades’ worth of observational data. ”
I think they forgot a fullstop between “rooted” and “in”.
I share the same corridor with climate / oceanographic modellers at my work place. Not only do they call numbers derived from models data, they refer to model runs as experiments.
I shake my head in disbelief.
Chemist.
Harvard continues to demonstrate that it’s racing, just racing, to the back of the pack…
Pointman says:
April 26, 2012 at 4:42 pm
I never thought I’d say it, but I’m getting sick of models.
Pointman
The only models which ever impressed me particularly are the ones I used to assemble as a kid, and the ones who tease me from the annual issue of Sports Illustrated.
I’m Reminded of Karl Pilkinton’s “Worry Hole”
From pilkipedia.co.uk:
worry hole – the part of the brain that casts doubt: Everyone’s got to fill that worry hole with worrie[s].
I’m getting a bit confused by this. Are they saying “it WAS worse than we thought”? I thought it was supposed to be “it IS worse than we thought” or “it WILL be worse than we thought”. Obviously, it’s always going to be “[something]…worse than we thought”. I can remember that bit.
“Curiouser and curiouser”, cried Alice…
Sunshinehours1 just want to mention you’ve done a great job summing up the met data for PNW. I have never visited your site and I was impressed.
I am a keen gardener and although many things besides the temperature affect the plant growth, your data does not contradict my 30+ years of experience.
There was an increased damage/mortality to more tender plants at my place (BC coast) in the last four or so years as compared to the 90’s. I wouldn’t make a mistake of making any future projections but I certainly have not observed any signs of warming in the last ten years; except perhaps for the Vancouver airport during the El Nino year of 2010 and the January scramble to get the airport ready for the Olympics.
Oh, great – the return of the “acid rain” meme. What has been mentioned cannot be un-mentioned.
Having been mentioned, the chances of this turning up as a greater threat than GW… umm, AGW, umm, CC… umm, CACC are very good indeed. Of course, there’ll be some wag that manages to link acid rain to ocean acidification, and then it’s goodnight Vienna. Or something like that.
Do I really need a /sarc tag after that?
I didn’t know Harvard produced engineers. I am one, I thought one had to grade papers and such to get an engineering degree. In any event, I’m befulded by this claim. I’ll check with EPRI and see how they regard it. I hold respect for EPRI, not Harvard.
Arrrrggggg, mobile devices and uncooperative fingers!
fhhaynie said:
“I suspect the real sulfuric acid aerosols have not declined as much as is postulated and the plume is located over the mid Atlantic states downwind of most of the power plants that are still burning high sulfur coal. Some power plants with scrubbers are actually producing “blue mist” sulfuric acid that hangs in the atmosphere longer than SO2. We in North Carolina are still getting it from TVA. Is there even a network for measuring sulfuric acid arosols that can be used to check the model?”
If you’re talking about:
“North Carolina Sues TVA to Clean Up Pollution”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6417740
“Cooper said. “Anyone who has been in the Smoky Mountains on an incredible day like today know[s] that haze should not be a part of the Smoky Mountains.””
Consider the area was named the “Smoky Mountains” long before there was a TVA.
John,
Cooper is pointing out the difference between clean clouds on humid days and the sulfuric acid aerosol haze (often called smog) on low humidity days with no clouds. I’ve seen the damage to the trees.
Note to self – do not hire engineering grads from Harvard (adds to previous list, do not hire MBA grads from Harvard).
Goldie at 5:06 pm
You bring up the hemispheric problem about which there is much misinformation.The difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic warming has nothing to do with anthropogenic emissions. The Arctic is warming because of warm Atlantic currents are carrying Gulf Stream water into the Arctic. It started at the turn of the twentieth century, paused in mid-century, and is still active. Before that there was nothing but slow cooling in the Arctic for 2000 years. Get the full story about it here: http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/arno-arrak.pdf
By extension, all the warming we’ve seen is clearly due to the reduction in the use of high particulate fuels such as wood and coal in the 1800’s, which were replaced with oil and gas, and then particulates were reduced further by clean air regulations. So, all the warming we’ve seen over the last two hundred years is just us cleaning up our own act and the planet returning to itz normal state?
Not that I believe that, but if they are going to take the position they have, then they cannot blame CO2 for much. if any, of the warming since the 1800’s because by their own models, the reduction in wood fire use alone would explain all the warming.
M. Hastings:
Rain droplets form around dust particles in the clouds. the 5.5ph number comes from research which was mostly conducted in the eastern US & Britain where sulfur is a significant component of that dust. The actual ph of rain (as opposed to nominal 5.5 which should have thrown out decades ago) varies with the composition of dust upwind of where the rain falls. If your weather comes over alkali flats or some other source of alkali dust, you can experience alkali rain. It was some years ago that I read a study of rainfall in Italy, where rain from the Balkans is acid and rain from North Africa is alkali which causes problems – the Balkan rain brings sulfur which reacts with calcium carbonate from the African Rain and eats away at masonry far worse than either acid rain or alkali rain would alone.
michael hart says:
April 26, 2012 at 8:26 pm
I’m getting a bit confused by this. Are they saying “it WAS worse than we thought”? I thought it was supposed to be “it IS worse than we thought” or “it WILL be worse than we thought”. Obviously, it’s always going to be “[something]…worse than we thought”. I can remember that bit.
********************
What they’re saying is, “Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!” or that the predictions that started this ball rolling were wrong or gas prices or your electric bill rising or your food bills rising or your control of your life slipping away or ……..
C02 = GLOBAL
SULFUR FROM MAN = REGIONAL, over DECADES
SULFUR FROM VOLCANOES = GLOBAL
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
This hilarious piece of faux research reminds me of a bag of house-brand cashew nuts I bought from a Tesco store, (Tesco is a supermarket chain in the UK); in small print at the bottom of the bag’s label was the legend
WARNING: THIS PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS
Notice the evident effect of pollution in the heavily industrialized states of Mississippi and Arkansas compared to other areas like Southern California.
Guess the air was squeaky clean over the eastern half of the country last month, ay? Hope you were wearing a mask this last week, though.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/7dTDeptUS.png
Asia, Africa, and Europe should also have huge warming holes, since they all produce massive quantities of airborne particles. In particular, the burning of wood and other biofuels (think cow dung) in Asia and Africa should qualify, especially since the density of human activities is so much greater than in the relatively unpopulated US. It’s odd then that we see cooling in the Southern Hemisphere, with much less aerosols, and warming in Asia, where high levels of aerosols have been produced for decades.
Here in Northern California, our small to medium cities show flat to cooling trends since 1895, but San Francisco, and the populous Bay Area in general, is steadily warming. The Bay Area smog does not seem to be masking any warming, and those of us happily living by the Pacific, caressed by prevailing, clean ocean breezes and not protected by a warming hole, are still in a cooling trend when it should be warming.
Frankly, I feel cheated. I believed Al Gore when he said we would get hotter weather, and decided to stay on the coast and enjoy the warming. I could have voted for warming with my feet and move to Arizona, like the Canadian Snowbirds, but I stayed and trusted the warming would come to me.
Serves me right for trusting Al Gore. Now I know how Tipper felt.
The CAGW cult are getting really, rellay desperate to find a way to explain why they can’t find the warming.
A “warming hole”.
Seriously???
Would be a bit like one of those other-worldy rabbit holes that precocious Victorian girls tripping-out on LSD get go down…?
I think I might have heard it all now.
“Major models,” eh? As with the U.K. Met Office’s self-fulfilling prophecies of doom, enhanced computations merely make more serious mistakes much faster.
If these magical models have any validity whatever (har), let’s see some explicit non-linear projections over periods of (say) five, ten, and twenty years, replicable by independent third-party evaluators concerned solely with assessing their unadjusted accuracy.
What’s that you say– AGW’s famed Precautionary Principle demands “action now”? Terrific– let’s start vetting these high-grant coefficient studies (sic) with due diligence and integrity TODAY.
DesertYote says:
April 26, 2012 at 7:59 pm
> I love measuring things, don’t care to much about what the results prove or disprove, just how accurate they are.
I approve. While I don’t have an accurate pH meter or radiation meter, I have an oscilloscope, scanner radio, telescope, and microscope. It’s nice to have extended senses, I least, I think so.
> … Once the monsoon gets rolling, the PH will fall to 6.8 to 7.2 if it is not proceeded by dust storms. In such cases, I have measured PH up to 7.8!
Eek! (In the surprise sense, not the body parts are falling off sense.) Do you know what ions are involved with the OH-? The actual number of ions involved is pretty small given the priximity to 7.0, but I didn’t realized we had rain that alkaline in the USA.
In our field biology class in high school, I had the task of measure O2 concentrations in water. Interesting process, involving fixing the water in the field (surprising what little droplets of concentrated H2SO4 does to cotton pants) and titrating in the lab.
Something is horribly wrong in the kingdom of science. 🙁
I worked in the Government for 40+ years and believe me “Based on” is one big BIG red flag because it has no real meaning. I no longer trust it in any context.
Correction: 30+ years.
Did they look at other parts of the world that would have had similar air characteristics (N England, Germany, the USSR and its satellites etc) or at China nowadays? and find a similar anomalous cooling effect? If not, they will need also to explain exactly what is ‘special’ about NA before their theory can gain much credence.
So smog kept southern California cool? It must have! In the 50s and 60s I could smell the sulphur! In the San Fernando Valley, we had summer temps of 110+ back then. Wow! How hot might it have been without smog? Did it blow to the east and make Arizona cool, too? Nevada? New Mexico? Please explain. I’m facinated!
@M Hastings who said: “Today it rained again and because I read this article and was curious I took the PH of the rain puddles on my deck and walkways and in the garden, all three puddles had a PH of 7.8 or higher.”
What’s your deck made of?
davidmhoffer: “By extension, all the warming we’ve seen is clearly due to the reduction in the use of high particulate fuels such as wood and coal in the 1800′s … ”
To take it further …
Is it possible the dustbowl in the 1930s was caused by sudden temporary de-industrialization caused by he 1929 stock market crash? And that resulted in much cleaner air?
Pay no attention to the Mann behind the curtain….
Wait until the Kardassians find out about the warmhole — Benjamin Sisko will be the only one who can save us!
What anyone else would have thought would be that warming was caused locally and this area was not warmed so it needed to have the warmth spread from the areas that were already warmed. Much more probable but totally unproven because when it was suggested a decade ago the grants were removed from those that suggested it should be investigated. They joined as engineering computer modellers instead of climate ones or no one at all would have heard of the idea.
Consensus is not a convincing argument when you meet a dissident thrown out of the club.
davidmhoffer: “By extension, all the warming we’ve seen is clearly due to the reduction in the use of high particulate fuels such as wood and coal in the 1800′s …
Don’t mock it.
One of the acid rain activists I knew in the early sixties worked out that the removal of particles and sulphur would result in a one degree rise in temperatures based on some climate chamber and cloud formation work he was doing. It does not seem that out of line with the reality, the difference is that his projections flattened not escalated.
Seems mighty contrived. Model on top of model?
Aerosols acting as condensation nuclei for cloud formation? Not a giant leap from hypothesising galactic cosmic rays acting as condensation nuclei. One wonders whether this will backfire on their narrative?
As for them proudly declaring that their models are rooted in decades of observational data, that should hardly be taken as a vote of confidence. It would be as if a polling company boased “our survey on American voting behaviour is based on sample sizes of dozens and dozens of individuals.
It is so clearly a weakness that one wonders again, whether this will backfire. It should be obvious that centuries of observation data are needed.
So in 1941 when the Soviet Union moved all its heavy industry east of the Urals, European Russia warmed up and the German Army didn’t freeze to death then…who knew?
The researchers found that interactions between clouds and particles amplified the cooling. Particles of pollution can act as nucleation sites for cloud droplets, which can in turn reflect even more sunlight than the particles would individually, leading to greater cooling at the surface.
Wait, are they saying cloud feedback is negative?
Became the solar system and in him and the Earth and on Earth all for life, and only came after a human being-man.
The man invented the computer and it programs.
With programs performed a variety of models to check everything before its creation.
And guess what. Man who believed in their models in which he has inserted his desire and knowledge!
I now models “took power into their own hands” and command the man what will work and what to believe.
Get a grip!
For your general Reading Amusement, here’s the definition from the ever-reliable wikipedia, of an Ad hoc hypothesis …
“In science and philosophy, ad hoc means the addition of extraneous hypotheses* to a theory** to save it from being falsified …. Ad hoc hypotheses are often characteristic of pseudoscientific subjects***”
My added notations
*Aerosols
** CAGW
*** Well yes, exactly. 🙂
Jason says: April 26, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Nothing about this makes any sense.
What they are trying (not) to say is this:-
The world has been in a warming phase since the little iceage. However increasing pollution before 1970s was repressing this rise … this wasn’t noticed, as it occurred slowly, but in the 1970s quite suddenly a lot of clean air legislation was passed which removed this pollution which repressed US (i.e. global) temperatures, and caused them to rise rapidly from 1970s for a few decades.
In other words, much of the “worrying and rapid increase” in global temperatures was due to previous environmental policies which had been artifically repressing global temperatures”.
The thing to note, is that this a one off effect. It will not continue. Indeed, the real truth is that far from warming the planet, air pollution causes cooling.
And, let’s say it …. it was the environmentalists that saved us from this colder world!
Assuming the temperature map is accurate and the asserted cooling mechanism is true, the coolest areas (southern MO, AR, and NE Mexico) do not correspond with the locations of heavy industry and coal-fired power stations (upper Mid-West, North-Central, and NE US), and prevailing winds are from the W and NW.
Remind me never to hire consultants or graduates from Harvard’s SEAS to engineer stuff that must operate in the real world.
We should see dramatic cooling in China, German Ruhrland or whatever industrial area then. We do not see anything like that. One thing is clear, whether it warms or cools, all is man’s fault.
Alexander K says:
April 26, 2012 at 9:34 pm
This hilarious piece of faux research reminds me of a bag of house-brand cashew nuts I bought from a Tesco store, (Tesco is a supermarket chain in the UK); in small print at the bottom of the bag’s label was the legend
WARNING: THIS PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS
You’re lucky you found some nuts therein. Check out a bar of top-brand Cadbury’s confectionery for the word “chocolate”. It doesn’t qualify, too little cocoa solids. Check out a Tesco own-brand bar at half the price – it has the word and does qualify.
As I said earlier, this kind of research is done in a data-free environment – “may conttain traces of data”. What emerges is insignificant but misleading, yet is hailed as “ground-breaking”. The only ground that should be broken is to bury it where it belongs.
That’s like saying, If it’s warm it’s man made and if it’s cold it is also man made. (I will make a personal note that these bozos are thick as two planks).
They’re trying to narrow their special type of Anthropological-Climatology down to two convenient factors ‘anthropogenic warming’ and ‘anthropogenic cooling’.
The constant blame of human activity on the weather is nauseating and shows their misanthropic tendencies and all for what? financial incentives? Eco-political ideology, there’s a name for these people, hmm, what is it? oh yea, “SELL OUTS”.
I wonder how they modelled the 100 atmospheric nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada test site. I noticed the fallout map is roughly consistent with the darkest spot of the warming hole. If the residence time of those test particles is also one week that’s two full years of particulate cooling.
As a first step in combating Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, we should put more particles into the air. I propose that General Motors resume production of the 1970 Chevelle SS 396, and drivers spin the tires at every opportunity. It is the least we could do to save the planet.
When I was in mountainous SW Virginia in the mid-80s, I also got a pH kit to measure rainfall pH. Surprisingly, it would always come out to right around 7.0 every time. This after reading Science News articles of “battery acid” levels (less than 5.0 pH) right in my vicinity (downwind of the Ohio & Kanahwa R. valley coal plants). I think that’s when I finally stopped my SN subscription in disgust.
Warming Hole? Why not coolness dome?
Models are “rooted” in obsevational data. Does that mean “created from”? Can they recreate the past climate?
The first model’s output is the second model’s input. GIGO
sunshinehours1 says:
April 26, 2012 at 10:57 pm
davidmhoffer: “By extension, all the warming we’ve seen is clearly due to the reduction in the use of high particulate fuels such as wood and coal in the 1800′s … ”
To take it further …
Is it possible the dustbowl in the 1930s was caused by sudden temporary de-industrialization caused by he 1929 stock market crash? And that resulted in much cleaner air?
It is a myth that industrialization caused a large rise in particulates. The opposite is true. Domestic burning of fuels and agricultural burning (as well as motor vehicles in the 20thC) were the main source of particulates until around 1960 in the developed world.
Gail Combs says:
April 26, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Of course using models with well massaged and pureed data is still laughable even if the model is supposedly “rooted in decades’ worth of observational data.”
Harvard only said the model was “rooted” in the data — not that they actually used any of it.
Questions, questions, always more questions than answers. So dust cools?
Dust particles are solid are they not? Since they are solid wouldn’t they heat up slower and cool down slower than gas vapors? Wouldn’t they hold more “heat” longer than a gas vapor? Don’t they also give off Long Wave radiation like gas vapors? So depending altitude of concentration dust particles, say 0ft to 100ft above the surface wouldn’t that dust “warming” effect be “Recorded” compaired to less dusty days? If the dust concentration was at a higher altitude wouldn’t dust LW back radiation add to “Earth’s Temperature”? So how do you separate that effect from Co2 induced warming in the from “dust warming effect” in the “Data”?
It’s worse than we thought!
Fred Allen on April 26, 2012 at 5:59 pm said:
The nonsense continues. Many people speculated that the alarmist crowd would try and shift blame to particulates for the absence of warming…and here they go. Nothing wrong with the climate models. It’s the particulates that we didn’t take into account. Send more money.
———–
I have never come across such people. Would you like to name them?
My understanding is that aerosols and CO2 are well know to be countervailing influences on climate for decades and decades and decades. It goes all the way back to the nuclear winter modelling and likely paid a part in the speculation about ice ages way back in the 70’s. It’s popped up again when interpreting Chinese temperature trends and keeps on being a factor to the present day.
Aerosols are even included in the climate models.
So maybe you need to get out more.
Grasping at straws — my favorite game.
The math is all wrong. Particulate pollution peaked in 1980, and has been falling ever since, but they claim it is still causing cooling.
The cooling was 1 degree over 60 years (1930-1990) but only 0.3 degrees over 20 years (1990-2010). I see no significant difference.
The killer smogs of the 40’s through the 60’s have ceased as the particulate levels dropped, but the cooling goes on?
Why don’t the cities with the highest levels of particulate pollution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates#Affected_areas
also show the largest temperature drops?
Why isn’t the US ‘warming hole’ located over the most polluted US areas instead of the least polluted areas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-PM2.5-nonattainment-2007-06.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-PM10-nonattainment-2007-06.png
Look at Caliornia central valley. No change according to their model. Anyone who lives there (Anthony) can see their model looks broken just on that alone.
Check this out:
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/04/24/the-lack-of-recent-warming-canard-no-cigar-but-thanks-for-playing/#more-10677
The current “debate” has turned me into my own horrible broken record: that current scientific skills allow two, contrary positions based on the same information.
The warming continues (Hansen) & it doesn’t continue (Jones). Sea-levels are going up (Envirsat) & they are the same (tidal records and maps/photos). Antarctic sea-ice is diminishing (warm water) & it is expanding (satellites). Global warming causes cooling, more moisture in the atmosphere causes more extensive droughts, Here, pollution was terrible in the 70s but better now (EPA) & pollution is why the NE US hasn’t warmed because pollution there has remained bad.
All together, CO2 is both incredibly powerful and overwhelms all other forces & it is so weak we can’t see its effects yet.
Postage Stamp Science (PSS): the type of science you get when you focus in on tiny elements, to the exclusion of all other elements and context, such that you can proclaim robust solutions to non-existent problems.
We should get all these guys in one room and insist that nobody leaves until there is just one man (or woman) standing who Understands. A “Hunger Games” of Climate Science.
“It is a myth that industrialization caused a large rise in particulates. The opposite is true. ”
I think coal was burned in industry directly. Like steel mills.
http://www.jaha.org/DiscoveryCenter/steel.html
It is astounding that such a lazy and defective piece can be produced by an entire group without any of them detecting how easily it could be refuted.
“Leibensperger, Jacob, and Mickley were joined by co-authors Wei-Ting Chen and John H. Seinfeld (California Institute of Technology); Athanasios Nenes (Georgia Institute of Technology); Peter J. Adams (Carnegie Mellon University); David G. Streets (Argonne National Laboratory); Naresh Kumar (Electric Power Research Institute); and David Rind (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies).”
It’s 2012. Where the heck is the learning curve? They had to know that in today’s www review of all things, their work would fall under immense scrutiny.
So did they really release this with confidence? Really?
There is something horribly wrong here. Both in the quality control of research and the means to assess merit for sponsorship. How does this get funded in the first place? Is there such an unlimited supply of revenue for academia that any nitwit folly attracts sponsorship?
Or maybe this was intended to be peer reviewed by the world wide web which has provided a refutation at a WUWT breakneck pace.
Anthony, are you pranking us? I swear that this paper was published in the Harvard Lampoon.
Now don’t laugh.
The science is settled, head for the hills.
Models also suggest that the Sahel may get more rain, less rain, more or less rain. That’s right!
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0509057102
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005GL023232
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2009JCLI3123.1
As for the UK it is projected to get more drought and more rain. That’s right!
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.04.035
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.1827
and I could go on and on…………………………. 😉
I wish people would find something better for these researchers to do. They are a waste of taxpayer’s money.
yeeha – this is a serenade to michael mann- a reprise of Carl Sagan’s Swan Song.
isn’t that perfect?
can you say Kuwaiti Oil Fires?
been there, failed that.
Sorry Professors, the hole is in your knowledge. Ever heard of the Arctic Oscillation?
http://virakkraft.com/AO-McMinnville.png
Sorry OT [snip at leisure]
[SNIP: It is OT for this thread. How about posting it here. -REP]
Ric Werme
April 26, 2012 at 10:09 pm
Calcium is the major one, followed by magnesium, iron and carbonates.
1st you guess
2nd you compute the consequences of that guess
3rd you compare those computations against the real world.
Conclusion: If 2 and 3 do not match, You are wrong. Period.
OK, lets try it.
I guess that if there particulates in the air, it would get colder. This is the old “nuclear winter” idea.
People like Carl Sagan, so called scientist (really just a publicist) computed how much particulates would make how much winter.
Along came the gulf war, LOTS of particulates. Lets see how the computation bore out: <i."However, pre-war claims of wide scale, long-lasting, and significant global environmental impacts were not borne out and found to be significantly exaggerated by the media and speculators"
Conclusion, they are wrong, period.
Look at a utube video I found, “a taxi ride in china” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLD6igvPAFA , notice the, uh, particulates. Want more, here’s more http://www.google.com/search?q=pollution+china&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&as_qdr=all&prmd=imvnsu&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8CibT6muO4Oe2gW24ITiDg&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1152&bih=716 . Is it, and has it been for several decades, a lot colder in China than elsewhere? China is getting a LOT more particulates then the USA EVER did. Conclusion, computation and the real world do not match.
Lets look at the actual study.
The guess, to start with, is vague and thus useless. It starts by assuming that there is such and such warming in the first place which is being masked. There is a lot of evidence that this guess is wrong or overstated (comparing the computations to the real world, they do not match), and even more evidence that such “data” as we have has been, uh, “adjusted” http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif . It then goes on with a guess that something has masked this. This is not one guess, but two. As such, it is impossible to prove wrong since it depends on the supposed warming being cooled by supposed particulate cooling, and thus the data is, essentially, zero warming, which means that the real world data is essentially nothing, zip, zilch, zero, nada. However, it could be zero warming simply by assuming that guess #1, that there is warming being masked, is false.
Since this is really not one guess, but two, it cannot be computed. We must thus stop here, we cannot go on to step 3 since we are stopped by the too vague guess of step one from being able to compute for step two. This is not even going into the problem seen above where the data is “adjusted”, which means that we cannot use that suspect data to compare to anything anyway.
Since both the “real world data” of step 3 and the computation of step 2 have essentially merged in the modeling, we never really get to step 3, we stop at step two and call it step 3 and hope nobody notices. Thus comparing models to models is going to step 2 and simply pretending to go to step 3.
Also, when I look at this article for any actual data, I see none. Oh, there are a few vague mentions of models and suchlike with large assumptions in them (such as that there is any warming to be masked). As such, they have not followed the scientific method, at least not that I can see here, which is to show their computations and the comparison to the real world, exactly how they did either, to see if they match. The article is therefore useless. I mean, they don’t even try to show any data or computations at all, simply expect us to believe their conclusions based entirely on their say so. That is not science.
They gave me no reason to believe them, so I won’t. End of story.
The real study:
People have been hearing us say that there is dangerous warming for years.
People look outside, and have for years now, and are starting to say “OK, so where is this warming?”.
They are starting to not believe us, this imperils our funding.
It also causes the political class to lean on us, they see this as a way to gain control of everything everyone does everywhere (AT LAST!), and it must not be imperiled.
Quick, make up an excuse for why they don’t see any warming!
If they get suspicious when we present, essentially, zip zilch zero nada actual data to prove this, just tell them it is in a lot of complicated (and expensive!) models that they would not understand, so just trust us, we know what we are doing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGoU7urNTbI&feature=related .
Cement, cooldecking, and dirt.
And thanks to everyone taking their time out to explain this to me.
Has anyone been able to do an actual study on the effects of acid rain or is it all forecasted effects?
“Cement, cooldecking, and dirt. And thanks to everyone taking their time out to explain this to me. Has anyone been able to do an actual study on the effects of acid rain or is it all forecasted effects?”
Yes. Much of my research at EPA was funded by the inter-agency acid rain program mandated by congress. My expertise is in air pollution damage to materials. We did both laboratory chamber studies and field studies. In the field we seperated the effects of rain from the dry deposition of acids by covering half of our material specimens when it rained. In general, there was more damage on the specimens that were covered when it rained than those that were exposed. The rain tended to wash away the dry deposited acids. You can review some of our results by googling “Fred H. Haynie”. Also, it is reviewed in Chapter 9 of EPA criteria documents.
They fail to show parallel temperature curves for the Unites States and for the supposedly unpolluted world, for the time period involved. Undoubtedly this information exists. Without showing this information their work has no credibility.
Philip Bradley says:
And for those who are sceptical that aerosols can affect the climate by the amount claimed there is the Weekend Effect, where temperatures change by around 0.5C in a regular weekly cycle. Almost certainly an aerosol effect.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/09/17/947631.htm
OK, lets look at this:
“Although the exact mechanism to explain the “weekend effect” is unclear, the researchers suggest that aerosols – small airborne particles – released into the atmosphere by industrial processes might affect cloud cover, in turn influencing temperature.”
“Unclear”?
“Suggest”??
Excuse me???
Is this even really science?
Am I supposed to just, like, believe them, when they first admit that they don’t know what they are talking about?
What exactly is it that I am supposed to believe, again?
Perhaps this? “Urban heat island effects – the tendency of cities to hold more of the Sun’s warmth overnight – have also been proposed as a possible cause of a weekly cycle in temperature over Melbourne, in Australia.”
“”A few studies, some of them controversial, have reported weekend effects in local meteorological parameters and even in urban temperatures.” Controversial, how, in what way, why? Who exactly declared them “controversial” and could they have an agenda? OK, I’ll play, I declare this study “controversial”. Now, why should you believe it is?
“On the other hand, weekend effects caused by vehicular traffic practices are well documented in studies of urban pollution and atmospheric chemistry.” Just a thought, could all those hot cars with their, dare I say it combustion engines (that means fire) be creating heat by all that fire? Drive around for a while, put your hand on the hood, heck, grab the exhaust pipe if you don’t believe me, notice anything temperature wise? For that matter, just leave it out in the hot sun all day, even that does something. And then there is all that friction driving around, people at work actually doing a lot of stuff and using heat producing power to do it. There is also a lot more people in the city on weekdays (work, you know), all those warm bodies. I dunno, seems to me it is no surprise with all that activity and fire around that these areas warm up. And now I wonder again about which stations are doing this measuring exactly, could it be that they are picking urban stations to present this data, and thus measuring essentially all this activity (and fire) in the workday city as compared to the non workday city on the weekend? Perhaps that is why, with different customs, it is different in Japan and entirely missing in Europe?
“The new study found that the magnitude of the weekly cycle in Japan is smaller than at many U.S. stations and is not statistically significant enough to be detectable in Europe.”
Odd that, wouldn’t you expect that it would be true everywhere similar? These places are similar, it should also be true there, why isn’t it?
At many US stations, so, not all stations report this? How many do not? Is there any cherry picking going on here?
Also, the study this whole thread is about talked about particles lasting about 1 week (Compared to greenhouse gases, particulate pollution has a very short lifetime (about 1 week)), yet now we are saying the particles on Friday are missing entirely by Saturday? And, these particles are clearing out slower in Japan, and seem to just hang around all the time in Europe. Must be part of the culture of Japanese and European particles, maybe European particles are just lazy.
If this is the best you got, I’ll stay skeptical.
We are in the skinny period of history (Inter-Glacial) and as we all know the planet toggles between states. Climatologists (the infant science) have a long way to go.
Fact: There are certain physical and magnetic conditions along with stimuli that cause a change from a glaciated state to a non-glaciated state and visa-versa.
The inputs that have been missing from all the various models are unknown along with weighting and phase assignments of the inputs that they are using.
When climatology can demonstrate what conditions exist and what stimulus is present for the glacial to inter-glacial transition &visa-versa, I’ll start listening.
Cheers!
Huh. Harvard must need more government money.
If this is the best you got, I’ll stay skeptical.
I picked that Weekend Effect study pretty much at random. Other studies show cloud cover and precipitation effects, even a weekly cycle of changes to atmospheric pressure.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034160.shtml
Such studies are controversial because they find climatic changes on a weekly basis of similar size to the claimed effect of anthropogenic GHGs over decades. And if weekly changes in aerosol levels can cause these effects, then changes in aerosol levels over decades would presumably cause similar sized trends over those timescales. Thus a single mechanism explains weekly and decadal scale climate changes. Occams razor and all that.
Also note how the changes in diurnal temperature range over the week are almost the same as those found in the global temperature averages over decades.
It is truly amazing … the dogma says increasing CO2 (due to humans) causes temeprature to rise. So obsevations of falling temperatures get explained away by some other human induced artifact. Its just truly amazing …..
Arno Arrak says:
They fail to show parallel temperature curves for the Unites States and for the supposedly unpolluted world, for the time period involved. Undoubtedly this information exists. Without showing this information their work has no credibility
It’s worse than that, they also fail to show parallel temperature curves for the super polluted world, specifically, China. There is a LOT more pollution there, so they should be able to show a much greater, and easier to prove effect there, they did not.
The idea is, make a guess, compute the results if that guess is true, compare it to the real world. They instead make a guess, compute it’s results, make another guess, compute it’s results, compare the first guess to the second, and never actually compare either guess to the real world at all. They live in their own little world. If that is the new way of science, than they are astrologers, the age of reason is over, and we are going into a new dark ages.
Astrologers on this planet have always been well paid.
It looks simple to me. The people they are trying to convince mainly live in the area shown, east coast Americans. They are trying to make an excuse for the lack of warming, specifically to those people there. Thus, they don’t bother with any other areas, because no one who pays their bills lives in those other areas. They don’t care about the unpolluted world, or the super polluted world, even though that could further the science, because this simply isn’t science, it’s about butt covering for lack of warming to the American taxpayers. That is my scientific guess. I compute that, if they were doing actual science instead, that they would also show similar data on both more and less polluted areas (allowing my theory to be falsifyable). They do not, so for now, my theory stands.
to M Hastings ,
To be more specific, google “Fred H. Haynie”+”acid rain”.
D*mn. Just when I get everything in the Universe down to the photon through mastering the electronic engineering pursuant to the transmission, capture & analysis of electromagnetic energy through the atmosphere, space, & industrial compounds for a living,
MAGICAL WERMHOLES uh DETH dun POPT Up ‘N
RUINT Muh PRuhPOR-Shuh-NUT UN’a VERS!1!
This dang Magic Mannian Math that CALCULATES DOOMSDAY evun if ya FEED it CALIBRASHUN data,
an thim DOGGONE M.A.G.I.C.A.L. *T.R.E.E.M.O.M.E.T.E.R.S.* wut’s ackSHuhLEE HEET SINTSURS with TIME MuhSHEENz On Em,
blowd muh hole radarproof internet & spaceage meme with thuh
biggest heeter in (uhROWND) thuh WERLD
an
WE CAINT EVUN FIND IT.
Caws we aint got no instermunts find sump’n that speshul.
__________
The real deal in all this,
is WHY COULDN’T ANY OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE tell it was hockey sticks and magic treemometers?
Hay.
Wat.
How yew no wich wunna thimm thair TREEMOMITURS is CALuhBRAYTeD?
CAWS THISN’S thuh WUN Muh MAGIC BLACK & DECKER CALIBRATED BOREHOLER
is A POINT’N itSEYuLF to BOY!1!1!! Now GIT BACK!11!1
GIT1!BACK!!!!!!
iT SINTSis uh…
CLIMIT IMMURGuhNtCEE!1!!
(its got speshul sintsurs.)
It caint find thuh BIGGEST HEETER to EVER SURROUND thuh HOLE WERLD
but it kin tell yew to within a TENTH of a degree the TEMPERATURE 500 years ago.
Yew no wat that is, boys?
‘At Tair’ s sum POWWWWerFuL Prognostif..UH..kayt’n THAIR.
poWWWWERFuL..
Philip Bradley says:
I picked that Weekend Effect study pretty much at random. Other studies show cloud cover and precipitation effects, even a weekly cycle of changes to atmospheric pressure.
Let us say, for arguments sake, that there is a weekend effect. The fact that it is weaker and in some places entirely missing from places that should have it just like the USA creates some doubt, however, for now, let us say that it exists. The problem is not that it exists, the problem is that there is not one single shred of evidence in any of these links you have shown me that it is due to aerosols. In fact, these sites do not even try to show any evidence that it is aerosols. Lets look at this latest one.
Contrarily, we suggest that the weekly cycles may be related with changes in the atmospheric circulation over Western Europe, which may be due to some indirect effect of anthropogenic aerosols.
Not one single shred of evidence to back that up is even attempted, and look at all that weasel wording, suggest, may be, may be, some indirect effect. They are so vague that this does not even count as a scientific theory, since there is no way to quantify “some indirect effect” or even know what it is. Am I supposed to just take there word that it is one thing, and not a bunch of other things that I can easily think of just right off the top of my head? Is the new science just some person who calls themselves a scientists says “it is so”, and I am just supposed to believe them? That is not the scientific method, that is the pre scientific method, where if a Famous Old Dead Greek Guy said it, it must therefore be so. I am afraid you are several hundred years behind the times.
Just some other possible reasons for a weekend effect, off the top of my head:
All that combustion in all those cars, plus the friction of them rushing around, and all the workaday activity on weekdays (using heat producing power) creates heat. Heat creates lower air pressure, effecting air circulation, precipitation, etc, as does the fact that this hot air will tend to rise. Enough cars etc making enough heat, and this effect could effect a wide area, especially downwind. It can also change wind patterns.
Combustion will also create chemicals, such as CO2, which will effect the clouds and atmosphere. They will also effect the local plants, and any plants downwind. What effects plants will in turn cause changes in the plants that will effect the climate, briefly.
Changes in air chemical composition may also effect cloud formation directly, or local greenhouse effects, or indirect effects like the formation of smog from ozone, etc. They can also react with chemicals released by plants. The chemicals released by plants may also be altered by these chemicals in the air, which can further change the air composition and further change it’s effects. Wind can blow these chemical and thus the effect can be widespread.
And these are just quickie ideas off the top of my head, why do these “scientists” simply grandly pronounce “it is aerosols”, without one single shred of evidence to back that up, and just expect me to believe it when I can think of multiple other things it could be just right off the top of my head?
Do you just believe anything you here?
Wanna buy a bridge?
Warming good. Cooling bad. What’s not to like?
“Philip Bradley says:
And for those who are sceptical that aerosols can affect the climate by the amount claimed there is the Weekend Effect”
I have no doubt that aerosols can affect the climate.
But the problem is explaining why some states have been cooling since 1895, why they warmed from 1895 to the 20s and why they all decided to cool in the 50s/60s/70s and then decided to warm in the 1980s to 1998 and why they all decided to start cooling in 1998.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/is-the-usa-warming-the-noaa-data-saysit-depends-part-1/