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.
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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/