Linking the ENSO and PDO induced rainfall of the Pacific Northwest to proxy data in tree rings and lake sediments

“The tree ring data and isotope data match up on a short term, decadal scale,” said Steinman. “On a longer term, century scale, the records diverge.”
The article itself is behind a paywall, so I wonder: in most other reconstructions (e.g. MBH98, Gergis et al, …), tree ring series are screened for correlation with the actual temperature record, and series that don’t match up on a short term are simply excluded.
If this paper does the same, shouldn’t the above read “we only look at data that match up on a short term. On a longer term, century scale, the records diverge”?

“The tree ring data suggest dry conditions during the Medieval Climate Anomaly summers, while the isotope data suggests wetter than expected winters.”
Isn’t that sort of a way to say that the two agree with each other but make it sound as though they don’t?

“Expected” on the basis of theory as usual. If you’re going to “expect” something logically and rationally, you should look at facts instead of theory.
Fact: In this part of the country, winters are the wet season. Most of the precip falls in winter. That holds true in cooler times like the ’80s and in warmer times like the 2000s. So you should “expect” it to hold true in another warmer time like the 1100s.

Are they expressing surprise that rainfall could substantially different trends in different seasons on a centennial timescale? They shouldn’t be surprised such a thing could happen at all! It’s just happened over the entire US in the last century or so! Specifically, only one season shows precipitation increases from 1895 to the present of any magnitude close to being significant: Fall. For the US average, every other season is flat: basically zero trend. Clearly for whatever reason, nature can decide to arbitrarily partition long term rainfall trends by season. One doesn’t need questionable proxy evidence for this: one has the observed precipitation record!

“Medieval Climate Anomaly” … Ah, yes, that would be the Mediaeval Climate Optimum, I presume … but of course ‘some’ people could never call it that. D#mn this Newspeak!

@Nick Stokes
> Hardly erased …
… but certainly weasel-worded to death, thus effectively erasing any competition to recent (i.e. post 1990) “unprecedented” weather. The “body English” on this carefully crafted sentence is plain to see.
“The EIV reconstructions suggest that temperatures were relatively warm (comparable with the mean over the 1961–1990 reference period but below the levels of the past decade)”
😐

Mike M says:
July 5, 2012 at 4:06 am
“The tree ring data suggest dry conditions during the Medieval Climate Anomaly summers, while the isotope data suggests wetter than expected winters.”
Isn’t that sort of a way to say that the two agree with each other but make it sound as though they don’t?
No, it’s a way of saying they don’t agree, but maybe we dont need to acknowledge that tree-rings are totally mixed up as proxies and should only be used for ring counting dendrochronology for C14 calibration.
Note the comment about they’re betting for spring and summer… also note the total absence of their sensitivity to CO2 levels.
What they are finally recognising in and backhanded and opaque way is that tree rings are no bloody use as long term temperature proxies. In fact, long term anything.

I remember seeing some old maps of America dating from the early eighteen hundreds. Several of those maps labeled the area east of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi as “the Great American Desert”. I’ve also read the Lewis and Clark papers, which also describe the aridness of the territory away from the immediate vicinity of the rivers. So aridity is hardly something new to the West and Northwest. And since the rivers of the Mississippi’s western drainage area do have water in them most of the time for the entire Summer and Fall, it stands to reason that the bulk of precipitation occurs during the late Fall, Winter and early Spring. Therefore it stands to reason the same cycles probably took place in the Medieval Warm Period. So what was the purpose of this paper?
Jay Davis

Yeah, using ‘MCA’ instead of ‘MWP’ scrubs away the nature of what happened no different than their lame switch from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’. Next they’ll change ‘LIA’ to PMCA – Post Medieval Climate Anomaly. (Is it just me or are they calling everything that’s natural an ‘anomaly’?)

Can’t see the whole paper, but on the surface, here we go again…
By comparing the two lakes, the researchers could determine the water balance between evaporation and precipitation.
Um, no. They could estimate a “water balance” between evaporation and precipitation of two specific lakes. Does sample size and variable parity not mean anything to “climate” scientists? (that, btw, is a rhetorical question). To his credit, the lead acknowledges a weakness in this regard.
Growth rings on trees are not only correlated with temperature and water. Rings of some trees may be, but sample size is critical for any ring proxy, with the possible exception of dendrochronology, which is temperature and moisture independent (mostly – even here there can be exceptions). The study has not been done that boxes the question about statistical robustness of sampling trees for growth based on free environmental variables.
We are looking again at grad student research supervised by a cohort of questionable supervisors. This isn’t to take away from the possibility that the research is decent, but, my tree ring and tea leaf proxies suggest the positive correlation is exceedlingly low.

“We generally understand that the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a warm period in much of the northern hemisphere that occurred about 950 to 1250 was a dry period in the American West,” said Byron A. Steinman, postdoctoral researcher in meteorology, Penn State. “But there is complexity to the patterns of drought and it may not have been dry in winter in the Pacific Northwest.”
===
Is this fellow in meteorology or what? Since when a warm period means dry everywhere? Post modern meteo is truly pathetic.

@Mike M.

Yeah, using ‘MCA’ instead of ‘MWP’ scrubs away the nature of what happened no different than their lame switch from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’. Next they’ll change ‘LIA’ to PMCA – Post Medieval Climate Anomaly. (Is it just me or are they calling everything that’s natural an ‘anomaly’?)

In ordinary usage, the term ‘anomaly’ denotes a event that is very strange or very unexpected. But in meteorology and climatology it has a more specialized mathematical meaning, denoting a signed deviation from a trend or norm:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
This usage is justified because it is relatively hard to make two thermometers agree exactly on absolute temperature values, because of baseline calibration issues. But they will more often agree on relative changes in temperature. So, while they might differ by a degree or so on some absolute reading, they will be more likely to agree on a temperature increase or decrease of 1 degree.
This is especially true for temperatures derived from ‘proxies’ like tree rings or ice cores. Changes in temperature are more accurately discerned than baseline values.
Actually, _all_ thermometers depend on a proxy of some sort. e.g. expansion of a liquid or metal element, electrical current flowing through a thermocouple, detection of IR spectral components etc. All of these kinds of devices rely on the thermal behavior of some substance or process, thus are subject to errors of calibration and observation. There is no such thing as a thermometer that read temperature “directly”, without relying on some kind of “physics model”.
Having said that it should be noted that:
1) some thermometers are much more accurate than others
2) defining “MCA” as an “anomaly” that extends over 300 years is, IMO, an “anomaly” (in the ordinary sense of the word). Especially when these same folks who defined MCA insist that a recent decade or two is “climate”.
😐

Nice lead-in, Anthony.

When will these idiots come to understand that tree rings are not a proxy for anything but time.

Could we please have dates for the “medieval warm period-climate anomaly”, whatever you call it alongwith a rough idea of the affected area?

In the olden days it was called Medieval Climate Optimum. Is there a scientific justification for inventing new terms for an established concept?
With the same effort we could rename all the elements of the periodic table. That would be fun, would not it?
Could start with Nefarium (Atomic number: 6, Atomic weight: 12.0108).

“Medieval Climate Anomaly” has been around for some time (since the early ’90s at least). Other phrases for the same period include the Medieval Drought and the Medieval Climate Optimum. The preference tends to be geographically varying and appears to be influenced by where the user lived. In California it was referred to as a drought, sometimes the “Medieval Drought.” Effects in the Sierra were fairly catastrophic with prolonged periods during which mountain streams on the east side did not flow and Lake Tahoe did not discharge. The problem is that there is a four-fold set of relative states climate can move into: “warmer/drier”, “warmer/wetter”, “cooler/drier: and “cooler/wetter”. About the only “proxies” that really help differentiate those four contingencies are actual plant distributions. Stable isotope ratios that are tied to temperature won’t tell anything about precipitation intensities. In Oregon dramatic east/west movements of the sagebrush-pinyon paired with the yellow-pine-Douglas fir zones are visible in the pollen record, which probably reflect rain fall rather than temperature. These movements are also probably not sensitive at less that multicentury scales, since forests and brush lands can’t migrate like animal herds.

“…MWP set to off. MCA repeater set to squawk mode B. O18 unit set to scramble. Both hands flapping, wrist strain nominal. Ready of takeoff on runway AR5. Remember people, keep a sharp lookout around Law Dome. That’s where the last crew bought the farm. The Grey Baron may be in the area…”

there is no evidence to suggest that the MWP was warmer than today. it was also a ”natural” warming period. todays warming is not. also the MWP was purely a northern hemisphere event . it was not global.

@Philip Bradley
> And implicitly, something we can’t explain.
In the ordinary sense of ‘anomaly’, perhaps.
But I think you’re overlooking the specialized, strictly mathematical sense of the word (as it used in meteorology and climatology):
http://mel.xmu.edu.cn/group/carbon/kcjs/Environmental_Oceanography/glossary/Anomaly.html
In this second sense of the word, it denotes anychange from a norm or trend, even very tiny ones. And they don’t have to be unusual or unexpected changes, just different than the trend.
Now the definition and calculation of the baseline trend or norm (from which anomalies are measured) is another matter, and always needs to be verified for soundness and accuracy.

Philip Bradley says: “I consider tree rings to be a proxy for something(s), but we don’t know what.”
Presumably favorable conditions for tree growth (or not). Which would involve non linear combinations of a large number of factors two of which are climate variables we may be interested in (rain and warmth) but which is most important when is unknown. But what we can say for certain when a bunch of trees show enhanced growth: something (or everything!) was going good for them. And the reverse when they all show diminished growth.

david brown says:
July 5, 2012 at 5:27 pm
Johanus, the heat wave has been in the media but the reasons for it are ignored. and America is a bigger polluter than China ”per head of population”.
The phrase you wanted was “per capita.” The US may produce more CO2 per capita than China — and CO2 is not pollution, despite what you may believe — but 16 of the 20 most-polluted cities in the world are in China…
http://www.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20071102-33814.html
…40% of it’s rivers are too polluted to drink safely, with half of those in Category V (too toxic to touch), and
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20120217000048&cid=1105&MainCatID=11
…up to 40% of its farmland is unsafe for growing crops due to cadmium, arsenic, and mercury contamination,
http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/thread-753470-1-1.html
Word around this part of Asia is “Don’t eat anything grown in China” — so your concern about the US producing more CO2 per capita than China is seriously misplaced.

duster, mwp was caused by increased solar activity and decreased volcanic activity. todays warming is far different. the national academy of science studies show the warm period was not global. some parts of the world [ some south pacific regions were cooler ]

The evidence is unequivocal and irrefutable: The Medieval Warming Period was an extended period (hundreds of years) of extreme warmth and was global in nature. The empirical evidence and peer reviewed research supporting the unprecedented MWP is massive and diverse.
http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html

john day, MWP is irrelevant. that was a natural warming and despite what you say there is no peer reviewed published work that indicates it was warmer than today .and if it was it still proves nothing, as the reasons for it are different. eg increased solar activity, decreased volcanic activity, those two things are not factors for present warming. the sun is in minimum and volcanic activity is not decreasing. there is as i have mentioned before no evidence that MWP was global. some parts of the planet were actually cooler then.[ tropical pacific ] natural c02 was also absorbed by the sinks as it was part of the carbon cycle. manmade c02 is not absorbed by the sinks thats why it is accumulating at such a rapid rate. sunny suffolk only proves that a ”northern hemisphere ” country had increased warming. and that is not a ”global” observation

bill tuttle, in regards to c02 being a pollution. some countries classify it as such. it depends how you define pollution. if c02 is causing climate change and that change is damaging the environment [ and things like flood damage the environment ] then it could be classified as pollution. per capita, per head of population it makes no difference? america is still a massive polluter. [ using the dictionary definition of a pollutant ]. what you say about chinese rivers etc is true. but we not discussing heavy metals or arsenic. we are discussing c02

@David brown
> … how many more examples do you need?
I happen to believe that all frogs come from rain drops. I have very convincing proof of this.
Every time it rains I start to hear frogs croaking in my yard. When the rain stops the frogs’ croaking stops soon afterward. I even found a frog in my rain spout once (unprecedented!).
The more it rains the stronger becomes my belief in froggy-hydro-genesis.
What else could it be? How many more examples do you need?
Do you know what “confirmation bias” is? (Yes, both sides, CAGW and Skeptic, practice it).
😐

david brown says:
July 6, 2012 at 6:10 am
bill tuttle, in regards to c02 being a pollution. some countries classify it as such.
Some countries also classify ketchup — a condiment — as a vegetable. In neither instance is there any scientific reason for doing so.
it depends how you define pollution. if c02 is causing climate change and that change is damaging the environment [ and things like flood damage the environment ] then it could be classified as pollution.
Provide the proof that CO2 is responsible for climate change and natural disasters. So far, you have only made unsupported statements without providing any proof.
per capita, per head of population it makes no difference? america is still a massive polluter. [ using the dictionary definition of a pollutant ].
The dictionary defines pollution as “the contamination of air, water, or soil by substances that are harmful to living organisms.” Using that definition, China is the biggest polluter (per capita) on Earth — it has poisoned 40% of its farmland and 40% of its rivers with arsenic, cadmium, and mercury. We have problems with pollution in the US, but none of our rivers are Category V — which means the water is too toxic to even touch.
what you say about chinese rivers etc is true. but we not discussing heavy metals or arsenic. we are discussing c02
We are discussion pollution. You keep insisting that CO2 is a pollutant, “using the dictionary definition of a pollutant.” I quoted the dictionary definition (above), and in order to continue to claim CO2 is a pollutant, you have to produce some proof that it is harmful to living organisms.

pollution is something that damages the environment. c02 damages the environment by changing climte

gail combs, all the periods you mention were before industrialization and have no relevance to the discussion. we are discussing agw not naturally occurring warming. we are heading into another ice age in around 9,000 years. scientists are well aware of the warming cycles after any major ice age. and they consider they do not apply to the present situation. you are skeptical of scientific data and methodology and yet you or your sources use the same methodology to produce your data. the difference is your conclusions are not endorsed by any major scientific group. from nasa to the world met, to the royal society to every academy of science on earth.. that does not necessarily mean you are wrong. but there is a very high possibility that you are

david brown says:
July 6, 2012 at 5:50 pm
pollution is something that damages the environment. c02 damages the environment by changing climte
1. Prove that CO2 changes the climate, and don’t just say “World Met says it does,” because there is no proof that it does, and don’t say, “It can’t be anything else,” because there is no proof of that, either.
2. If climate change does not damage the environment — the environment adapts to the climate. You have the odd notion that the environment is supposed to be static, and it isn’t.

Warmer than usual summers, with lots of sunshine, and wetter than usual winters.
Sounds like a pretty good deal for growing things and humans! Bring back the global MWP, please.

bill tuttle, i know climate and global temp has changed in the past. and all of those changes can be explained eg, increasing or decreasing solar activity, a change in the earths orbit, volcanic activity etc. however please explain present warming giving an example of what forcing agents are at work. and i know what a solar minimum is.[ a decrease of energy coming from the sun.] its a little like the decreasing credibility coming from your argument. you do not understand the hotspot, the cooling of the stratosphere, the properties of c02, the difference between climate and weather, the difference between natural and unnatural. and you claim to be more of an authority on global temp than the world met? it hardly inspires confidence in the links you gave me. i prefer to get my info from nasa, the world met, the csiro, the royal society, the american geophysical union and the american academy of science. because they do not endorse your position at all.

john day, you frog analogy is a very poor one. is there any scientific evidence or even a theory that frogs come from raindrops? there is however empirical observations that the planet is warming and that the sun is cooling. there is even a law in relation to the greenhouse effect. is there any scientific groups actively pursuing the study of frogs and rain drops? it sounds very silly doesn’t it? but that is only because the premise of your argument is

david brown says:
July 7, 2012 at 5:30 am
bill tuttle, lower solar activity means a cooler planet under natural conditions. how can less energy coming from the sun mean anything else ?
First of all, you claimed that “we have been in a solar minimum for 40 years. so there is no natural explanation for present warming” — where did you hear that? There have been *four* solar cycles in the last forty years, which means that there have been four solar *maxima* to give plenty of natural warming — the following graph shows them all quite nicely:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/ap-index-1932-2008.png
So where did you get that 40-year solar minimum? There hasn’t been one that long since the Maunder Minimum ended in 1715.
though there are other forcing agents besides the sun
The sun is not a “forcing agent” — the sun is the *source*.
eg albedo, volcanic and of course greenhouse effect .prove that c02 changes climate? well c02 certainly effects the temperature and that has been known for well over a century. . the greenhouse effect is basic physics.
You list only a very few of the many things that affect climate and temperature and then conclude that CO2 must be causing warming, which is a non-sequitur — and if CO2 causes warming, why did the Earth undergo a cooling spell between 1940 and 1965, which is the time frame that worldwide industrialization was pouring increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere?
how do you explain the planet warming [ and empirical measurements prove that it is ] when the sun is cooling? explain the physics of that .?
Empirical measurements prove that the planet hasn’t warmed since 1998 — in fact, the temperature has decreased and the trend is slightly negative:
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-cooling-dataevidencetrends/

Okay, the coding on that one (7:45am) was really ugly — this should clarify things a bit:
david brown says:
July 7, 2012 at 5:30 am
bill tuttle, lower solar activity means a cooler planet under natural conditions. how can less energy coming from the sun mean anything else ?
First of all, you claimed that “we have been in a solar minimum for 40 years. so there is no natural explanation for present warming” — where did you hear that? There have been *four* solar cycles in the last forty years, which means that there have been four solar *maxima* to give plenty of natural warming — the following graph shows them all quite nicely:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/ap-index-1932-2008.png
So where did you get that 40-year solar minimum? There hasn’t been one that long since the Maunder Minimum ended in 1715.
though there are other forcing agents besides the sun
The sun is not a “forcing agent” — the sun is the *source*.

the sun is source of energy and a forcing agent bill . increased solar activity can ”force ” climate to change. that means it is a forcing agent. we are in a solar minimum. i suggest you check with the relevant scientific groups to confirm this . [ NASA ] solar cycles still take place during solar minimums. you are badly misinformed . american temp is not global temp. global temp is the entire heat content of the planet. global temp is not cooling. it has been an upward trend for the last 15 years. with natural variability eg volcanic activity having a temporary cooling effect. cooling from 1940 to 1965 was caused by industrial aerosols . they over rode the c02 effects. however when aerosols were limited, temp began to rise again. aerosols industrial or natural [ volcanos ] have a cooling effect global temp wise . your sources have been telling you that we are not in a solar minimum or that global temp is not increasing.? i very much doubt that that position is from peer reviewed published sources. it certainly is not endorsed by one major science group on earth. can you name me one that supports your position? [ is that the sound of silence i hear ? ] i would reread that posting of mine . it comes direct from nasa. it destroys you argument about global temp cooling over the last decade and your reluctance to accept the fact of a solar minimum. now who should we believe, Bill Tuttle or NASA? i think the answer is obvious don’t you? enjoy your coffee but i think you need something stronger to wake you up

bill i mentioned the main forcing agents. there is not an infinite number. solar activity, albedo, greenhouse gases, volcanic activity. industrial aerosols, are the main ones. now can you show me what forcing agents are at work presently, warming the planet. [ or even cooling it ]. on one hand you say the planet is cooling and then say the sun is not in a minimum . how does the planet cool when the sun is increasing in activity as you say it is ?, that completely contradicts your argument .. and please note how i dealt with your argument about cooling from 1940 to 1965? i explained it logically and with information that you did not have. eg industrial aerosols cause cooling. the year 1940 is important. it was the beginning of the war when industry was in full swing. then you ban aerosols and voila, temp starts to rise again. it is so logical and obvious.

david brown says:
July 7, 2012 at 10:15 am
the sun is source of energy and a forcing agent bill .
Something cannot be both a source and a forcing agent. For example, ocean water is the source of a wave, but the “forcings” which create waves on a beach are wind, tidal effects, subsurface terrain, currents — even passing boats. The water is the source of the wave, but it doesn’t create the wave.
now can you show me what forcing agents are at work presently, warming the planet. [ or even cooling it ]. on one hand you say the planet is cooling and then say the sun is not in a minimum . how does the planet cool when the sun is increasing in activity as you say it is ?,
Putting words in my mouth will not win you any points. I said we’ve had four complete solar cycles, minima and maxima, where you insisted we’ve been in a solar minimum for the past forty years. I gave you a graph, which you obviously ignored.
that completely contradicts your argument .. and please note how i dealt with your argument about cooling from 1940 to 1965? i explained it logically and with information that you did not have. eg industrial aerosols cause cooling. the year 1940 is important. it was the beginning of the war when industry was in full swing. then you ban aerosols and voila, temp starts to rise again. it is so logical and obvious.
Logic FAIL. US industry did not go onto a war footing until 1942 and the EPA didn’t undertake any actions on aerosols until after it’s 1978 study — a decade *after* temperatures began to rise again.

“Medieval Climate Anomaly”
Well, hopefully they are easing into it, given that there were earlier warm periods so the MWP as not an anomaly.

bill, you missed the moon as an integral point of ocean behaviour. i think your comparisons between the sun and the ocean is rather silly.. it has nothing to do with the fact that solar activity effects climate. and that by definition means it is a forcing agent

smokey i am not saying anything. i am merely repeating what NASA, the world met and every major scientific group on earth is saying. saying ”Wrong ” is not a counter argument. and the sources you give are not peer reviewed or published in the appropriate science journals. your arguments are pretty much of a cliche. it is the same misinformation eg it is not warming, it is natural, c02 is a harmless trace gas. temp has no effect on weather. it is warming after an ice age etc? you say that rather emphatically. the truth is you do not know and your position is not endorsed by a major science group. so you may well be wrong. extreme weather events are on the increase. you would have to be blind not to see it. heat waves, floods , drought etc are not in decline. please give sources and figures for that claim. temp effects evaporation [ simple physics ] which must influence rainfall. storms feed of heat. thats why the southern hemisphere, the warmest hemisphere has the more intense storms. warm water feeds the energy of a storm. what 40% increase in c02? what are you talking about? what have large cities got to do with anything. urban island heat effect is nonsense, temp rises in rural areas as well. we are talking global temp not regional. the LIA is not effecting present global temp. the LIA was not a major ice age.and is certainly not responsible for present warming. you contradict yourself. firstly you say it is warming a result of the LIA . and then you say its cooling. which is it? if its cooling, that destroys your LIA argument. if its warming i win. i would suggest you study the NASA temp data or the world met. they say that temp is accelerating. melting glaciers and ice caps seem to indicate that as well. i am not interested in non peer reviewed studies that are not endorsed by a major science group/ that they are ”definitely ” wrong. but there is a huge possibility they are

Anecdotal evidence that the world’s weather is getting wilder now has a solid scientific basis in fact following a dramatic global assessment from the World Meteorological Organization.
A study released Wednesday by the WMO — a specialized climate science agency of the United Nations — says the world is experiencing record numbers of extreme weather events, such as droughts and tornadoes.
Laying the blame firmly at the feet of global warming, the agency warned that the number and intensity of extreme weather events could continue to increase.

smokey , when thinking in terms of trends three years indicates nothing. what is the trend for the last decade? it is increased warming. what is the trend for the last century? it is warming and more warming. taking phil jones out of context is cherry picking. what did phil jones say in the entire statement? did he reject AGW? no. the trend line over the last century is upward. the LIA ice age has nothing to do with present warming. scientists would have considered LIA and rejected it

that non existent global warming just killed 30 people in america. hundreds drown in flooding in russia. . extreme weather is just imaginary eh smokey?

smokey, wood for trees org. the people you used as a source for a temp graph is not a scientific group. their data has not been through the scientific process. it has no credibility. they certainly do not have their own satelite and scientists. how can you compare them to nasa? simply absurd

david brown says:
July 7, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Solar minimums and maximums are the two extremes of the sun’s 11-year activity cycle.[1
see bill. the eleven year cycle is actually part of the solar minimum. you still have solar cycles even during a minimum.
You just shot down your own argument. Here is a basic primer — it may help:
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engzonnecyclus.html
and here’s an expansion on it.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/FORECASTING_SOLAR_CYCLE.pdf
and the sun is both an energy source” and a forcing agent”. why cant it be both?
The sun is the driver by definition. By your logic, a bus driver is also a passenger in the rear of the bus.
a forcing agent is anything that ”forces ” climate to change. hence the name. and increased or decreased solar activity forces climate to change.
“Driver” and “forcing agent” already have set definitions — you’re not allowed to make up your own definitions based on what you think they should be.
i suggest you ask a friend who knows more than you what a forcing agent is. or better still. read a basic science book.
I suggest you lose that self-appointed superiority. You’ve already demonstrated your ignorance of both science and the proper use of its terminology.
europe went to war in 1939 by the way. and american industry was contributing to the war effort well before 1942. industrial aerosols cool, just as aerosols from volcanos cool. that is an established fact.
The established fact is that *Europe* went to war in 1939, but US industry didn’t crank up to wartime footing until 1942. We didn’t start providing surplus weapons to Britain until mid-1941, and most of what we sent overseas prior to that was food and gasoline, which didn’t contribute squat to the amount of aerosols needed for the cooling your supposition requires.
the increase or decrease in aerosols will effect the climate. if warming increased ten years before action was taken on aerosols, that could have been for a number of reasons. less aerosols due to better technology. less manufacturing or increased solar activity.
You try to invent your own terms, you try to invent your own history, now you’re trying to invent your own technological advances, and then you assume that your unsupported suppositions prove your assertions. Major error.
the final nail in your coffin is on one hand you say the sun is not in a minimum. meaning it is increasing in activity. but then you say the global temp is cooling.. that my friend, contradicts and destroys your argument
I’ve told you before to *stop putting words in my mouth* – I never said that the sun was not in a minimum, and the graphs I linked to clearly show that we entered the present minimum in late 2003. What I *said* was that we haven’t been in a 40-year solar minimum. You claim that we are and haven’t presented anything in evidence except your statement – no citations, no quotes, no links, just your statement. Your NASA snippet only verifies that we’re in the minimum of the current 11-year solar cycle.

improved technology would have meant less aerosols

if we have been in a minimum since 2003 why is global temp still rising? because the study was from 2003 that does not mean that is when the minimum started. and again i ask how can the planet warm naturally during a solar minimum. the decade 2000 to 2010 was the hottest on record according to the world met and nasa. your sources are not on par with mine. i have every major science group on earth behind me, including nasa, i am not even sure who your sources are. can you name them and the individual peer reviewed papers they have released?

After rising rapidly during the first part of the 20th century, global average temperatures did cool by about 0.2°C after 1940 and remained low until 1970, after which they began to climb rapidly again.
The mid-century cooling appears to have been largely due to a high concentration of sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere, emitted by industrial activities and volcanic eruptions. Sulphate aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate because they scatter light from the Sun, reflecting its energy back out into space.
The rise in sulphate aerosols was largely due to the increase in industrial activities at the end of the second world war. In addition, the large eruption of Mount Agung in 1963 produced aerosols which cooled the lower atmosphere by about 0.5°C, while solar activity levelled off after increasing at the beginning of the century
The clean air acts introduced in Europe and North America reduced emissions of sulphate aerosols. As levels fell in the atmosphere, their cooling effect was soon outweighed by the warming effect of the steadily rising levels of greenhouse gases. The mid-century cooling can be seen in this NASA/GISS animation, which shows temperature variation from the annual mean for the period from 1880 through 2006. The warmest temperatures are in red.

A common claim amongst climate “skeptics” is that the Earth has been cooling recently. 1998 was the first year claimed by “skeptics” for “Global Cooling”. Then 1995 followed by 2002. ‘Skeptics’ have also emphasized the year 2007-2008 and most recently the last half of 2010.
NASA and climate scientists throughout the world have said, however, that the years starting since 1998 have been the hottest in all recorded temperature history. Do these claims sound confusing and contradictory? Has the Earth been cooling, lately?
To find out whether there is actually a “cooling trend,” it is important to consider all of these claims as a whole, since they follow the same pattern. In making these claims, ‘skeptics’ cherrypick short periods of time, usually about 10 years or less.
‘Skeptics’ also take selected areas of the world where cold records for the recent past are being set while ignoring other areas where all time heat records are being set.
The temperature chart below is based on information acquired from NASA heat sensing satellites. It covers a 30 year period from January 1979 to November 2010. The red curve indicates the average temperature throughout the entire Earth.
The red line represents the average temperature. The top of the curves are warmer years caused by El Niño; a weather phenomenon where the Pacific Ocean gives out heat thus warming the Earth. The bottoms of the curves are usually La Niña years which cool the Earth. Volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991 will also cool the Earth over short timeframes of 1-2 years.
Figure 1: University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) temperature chart from January 1979 to November 2010. This chart is shown with no trend lines so the viewer may make his own judgment.
bill, i am ”backing up ” my argument with peer reviewed published studies and studies from nasa. all of which confirm my statements. now i await your sources

Understanding what drives climate does not occur by a process of elimination. It’s happens by a process of integration. There are many influences of climate that all need to be considered together to gain the full picture. The following lists the radiative forcing, loosely defined as the change in net energy flow at the top of the atmosphere, from the various factors that affect climate (IPCC AR4 Section 2.1). Positive radiative forcing has a warming effect (so obviously, negative radiative forcing has a cooling effect).
Surface Albedo has changed due to activity such as deforestation. This increases the Earth’s albedo – the planet’s surface is more reflective. Consequently, more sunlight is reflected directly back into space, giving a cooling effect of -0.2 Wm-2.
Ozone affects the climate in two ways. The depletion of stratospheric ozone is estimated to have had a cooling effect of -0.05 Wm-2. Increasing tropospheric ozone has had a warming effect of +0.35 Wm-2.
Solar variations affect climate in various ways. The change in incoming Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) has a direct radiative forcing. There is an indirect effect from UV light which modifies the stratosphere. The radiative forcing from solar variations since pre-industrial times is estimated at +0.12 Wm-2. Note that the radiative forcing from solar variations may be amplified by a possible link between galactic cosmic rays and clouds. However, considering the sun has shown a slight cooling trend over the last 30 years, an amplified forcing from solar variations would mean a greater cooling effect on global temperatures during the modern warming trend over the last 35 years.
this is a comment from a phd in physics bill. note he shows various climate drivers[ forcing agents ] one of them is solar activity. which means the sun is a forcing agent. you say i do not ”back up ” my argument? i have included sources and peer reviewed published research. i have many more. but you get my drift.

External forcing: a forcing agent outside the climate system causing a change in the climate system. Volcanic eruptions, solar variations and anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere and land use change are external forcings.
this is the scientific definition of a forcing agent bill. please not ”solar variations ” is included.

david brown says:
July 8, 2012 at 4:25 am
improved technology would have meant less aerosols
The improved technology wasn’t even invented until 1978, which you might have learned if you’d actually read the patent I linked to.
And at July 8, 2012 at 4:34 am:
nasa and every group involved in the study of the sun say we have been in a minimum for 40 years.
Prove it by producing a link, or the statement itself. You’ve had days to do that, and you keep asserting it and refusing to provide proof.
the difference is i am not challenging the science and you are. the onus is on you to really know what you are talking about. and you clearly have very limited knowledge in the area bill.
The difference is that I’m giving you information and sources and you’re merely parroting AGW talking points.
And at July 8, 2012 at 4:40 am:
if we have been in a minimum since 2003 why is global temp still rising?
You keep asserting the temperature is rising without providing proof except to keep repeating “world met” says so, yet you dismiss the empirical data Smokey provided which shows otherwise.
I thought you said you understood science. You’ve made basic mistakes and said some fairly stupid things in your comments here – this one (July 7, 2012 at 7:04 pm): smokey, some of your graphs look like they were drawn by a five year old. your temp global mean chart comes with no sources, for instance tells me you’re not smart enough to decode the reference source, which was right at the top of the chart. And this one, because the study was from 2003 that does not mean that is when the minimum started tells me you not only don’t know the difference between a study and a website entry, you can’t even tell when it was written. The NASA article is from 2009, and one of the points on the accompanying graph was 2003.
your sources are not on par with mine. i have every major science group on earth behind me, including nasa, i am not even sure who your sources are. can you name them and the individual peer reviewed papers they have released?
You haven’t proven a damned thing, child, you’ve merely made an appeal to authority without providing a shred of actual information to back up your statement. You’ve also ignored that every reference I’ve given you has been either from NASA, from educational sites and sources that provide links to the *peer-reviewed* authors and papers they cited, which you first failed to read and then challenged me to provide sources.
And at July 8, 2012 at 4:45 am:
bill you are forgetting germany and japans industrial output in aerosols. or do you think the allies fought themselves? Hitler’s preparation for war began in the mid 30s. as did japans. the uk was a massive manufacturing country even before the war.
Japan’s industrialization began in 1890 and her military industrialization began in the late 1920s – and the USSR wasn’t far behind. And yet, with all those aerosols floating around, the 1930s was the warmest decade of the 20th Century – at least it was until NASA/GISS began arbitrarily adjusting the historical temperatures downward.
And at July 8, 2012 at 5:04 am:
”A common claim amongst climate ‘skeptics’ is that the Earth has been cooling recently. 1998 was the first year claimed by ‘skeptics’ for ‘Global Cooling’. Then 1995 followed by 2002. ‘Skeptics’ have also emphasized the year 2007-2008 and most recently the last half of 2010.”
(remainder of AGW propaganda diatribe snipped)
bill, i am ”backing up ” my argument with peer reviewed published studies and studies from nasa. all of which confirm my statements. now i await your sources
You have provided *nothing* except some paragraphs that sound like they’re from Real Climate. Do you have one single clue what “providing sources” means?
And at July 8, 2012 at 5:28 am:
“Understanding what drives climate does not occur by a process of elimination. It’s happens by a process of integration. There are many influences of climate that all need to be considered together to gain the full picture.”
That’s the first intelligent quote you’ve pasted. Where did it come from? IOW, what’s the source?
this is a comment from a phd in physics bill. note he shows various climate drivers[ forcing agents ] one of them is solar activity. which means the sun is a forcing agent. you say i do not ”back up ” my argument? i have included sources and peer reviewed published research. i have many more. but you get my drift.
WHAT IS THE SOURCE, OTHER THAN “A Ph.D IN PHYSICS”?!? Geez, it’s like pulling teeth…
And at July 8, 2012 at 5:33 am:
bill i hope you now realise that the sun is a driver of climate. a driver of climate and a forcing agent mean the same thing
Okay, which one of you smarter-than-I-am commenters here can explain the difference between a driver and a forcing agent to brainchild, here?
And at July 8, 2012 at 6:50 am
bill you fail to take into account increases in solar activity. this would increase temp, even if aerosols were having a cooling effect. that explains why there was warming before aerosols were limited. the bottom line is that for the last decade temp has been increasing while solar activity has been decreasing [ your own claim ] so what is causing the increase in temp? it is a simple question.
I’ve given you the answer and you keep refusing to accept that there was been *no* temperature increase during the last decade.

Figure 8: Solar contribution to global warming according to Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, blue), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, red), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, green), and Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, purple).
It’s not the Sun
As illustrated above, neither direct nor indirect solar influences can explain a significant amount of the global warming over the past century, and certainly not over the past 30 years. As Ray Pierrehumbert said about solar warming,
here are some sources bill. lean and rind. i would also check the tung/ camp studies of solar activity. i am providing the sources. now it is up to you to do the rest. i have thousands if you are interested? something tells me you are not? it would mean accepting you are incorrect. climate skeptics tend to blindly cling to their ideology

To say we’re currently experiencing global cooling overlooks one simple physical reality – the land and atmosphere are only one small fraction of the Earth’s climate (albeit the part we inhabit). Global warming is by definition global. The entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance. The atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. To get the full picture on global warming, you need to view the Earth’s entire heat content.
Church et al 2011 extends the analysis of Murphy 2009 which calculated the Earth’s total heat content through to 2003. This new research combines measurements of ocean heat, land and atmosphere warming and ice melting to find that our climate system continued to accumulate heat through to 2008.
see bill. global warming is not just surface temp as you seem to think it is. you can google the murphy study. go on appeal to authority. they know more about the subject than you

here is the murphy study bill. i am including sources to counter the accusation that i have nothing to back me up. you can see i have a lot to back me up. peer reviewed studies. and data from nasa. you seem to have nothing?

david brown says:
July 8, 2012 at 12:23 pm
here is the murphy study bill. i am including sources to counter the accusation that i have nothing to back me up. you can see i have a lot to back me up. peer reviewed studies. and data from nasa. you seem to have nothing?
Congratulations — the idea of providing a source finally seems to have sunk in.
Your last sentence, however, tells me you either still haven’t read any of the links I provided or you have the attention span of a goldfish.

”wood for trees” is not a scientific link smokey. and your graphs contains no information as to who is responsible for them. who is the research group who did the measurements and formulated the graphs? . are they independent studies or done by a recognised scientific org ?you could have drawn them up for all i know. name the sources on which the graphs are based. and then as all good science studies do, please explain the conclusions with some kind of commentary . you know study papers. names, dates, .the names of the science journals the graphs are originally published in etc. i cant believe you expect to be taken seriously with the chicken scratchings you have posted. far more confirmed details please.

”you have more such charts smokey?” heaven forbid. just go to the nasa website if you want good science. they include in depth analysis. what you offer is not even on a primary school level

so smokey, you admit there has been a long term global warming trend since the LIA. bill would disagree with you. he says there was a cooling period from 1940 to 1965. and now he states that the last decade has seen no rise in temp. that means the LIA warming effect finished in 1940 according to bill? maybe you two should have a discussion to iron out your differences?

smokey , you are pulling my leg . if wood for trees uses graphs from nasa why do they resemble nothing like nasa has on their website? they look amateur .why is their nothing identifying the original source ?why is there no detail. why do the wood graphs differ from the graphs nasa has on their website? why would these graphs refute agw when nasa endorses it? why not just go directly to the nasa website? and you still have not answered my questions about the LIA.

in other words you do not know the answers smokey.? i know the answers i was just seeing if you did. and you do not. which means you have not fully researched the subject . .WFT is no substitute for NASA or the World Met

david brown says:
July 8, 2012 at 1:50 pm
you are wrong bill i browsed the links you posted. but if their conclusions are that the planet is not warming. or that aerosols do not cool climate. or that the sun is not decreasing in activity and is not a forcing agent . then they have little credibility.
You said you browsed the links, but you have no idea what they said? Pardon me if I disbelieve that.
Since you seem to believe that the WMO is the ultimate authority on climate temperature trends – so try to wrap your mind around this: The WMO gets its data from the Hadley Climatic Research Unit (HadCRUT) in East Anglia. HadCRUT data *shows* that the global temperature has not been increasing —
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/28/tisdale-a-closer-look-at-crutem4-since-1975/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/20/new-and-improved-crutem4-global-land-surface-temperature-data-vs-ipcc-ar4-cmip3-climate-models/
http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/04/connect-the-dots-global-warming-hadcrut-warming-turns-cooling.html
— yet the WMO, which has that exact same data, claims the temperature is increasing. So, who’s been lying to you – the Earth or the WMO?

bill, models for climate have been around for decades. more than enough time to confirm their reliability. and reliable they are. extreme weather, melting glaciers and ice caps, the warming of the oceans etc was predicted long ago. proving that models are reliable. obviously models for the future eg the impact of global warming if c02 levels double is speculative up to a point. who can predict the future with 100 percent accuracy .? . but going on the past, there is a good probability those models will be correct as well. models are based on research and the collecting of data and empirical observations. this all takes place ”before ” the models are formulated. models are not just made up as you seem to believe. i do not think you or smokey are qualified enough to question the science. smokey cannot even explain the premise of his argument about the LIA. and you do not know that the sun is a forcing agent.. he has never even heard of the World Meteorological Org. they have been around since 1854. that level of ignorance in inexcusable in a debate about climate. it is akin to not knowing who Newton was , when discussing gravity. it totally undermines smokey’s position . it shows he has done no research. he says the ”wood” people are ”interpreting” the data from nasa etc to construct their graphs. why not just rely on nasa? his only argument is that nasa is ”shady ” or cannot be trusted . a silly conspiracy . if nasa cannot be trusted why take their data to the wood org in the first place ? it is another contradiction .Hadcrut endorse the consensus on climate change. as does nasa, the world met and the royal society. are they all not to be trusted? what are your and smokey’s sources. name one major science group that endorses your position. you cannot. where are you models? who is collecting your data? if nasa cannot be trusted who can be? you do not have a leg to stand on. no sources, no endorsements. no real understanding of the science. and unsubstantiated conspiracy. it is not a good position to be in

mr moderator, you are supposed to be impartial.? smokey thinks i have abysmal scientific knowledge.? what i say comes from NASA and the CSIRO, so i think my knowledge is credible. needless to say, i do know what caused the LIA. and why the LIA could not be a factor now.i also know that the sun is a forcing agent. and also know that decreased solar activity cannot lead to increased natural warming. which is what mr tuttle and smokey think. i also know that the world met could not possibly mean ”world police force ”.i also see no need to take data from nasa too another party [ non scientific ] for graph construction. nasa has its own graphs, as does the world met. i suggest smokey study them. as for keeping my plane in the air? if id known smokey had anything to do with it, i would not have boarded. and smokey i am from planet earth. and that planet continues to warm. thanks mr moderator. i have enjoyed our little tussle. albeit rather pointless. may you receive a little knowledge on the subject of climate science. for that, we will all be truly grateful

bill, aerodynamics is endorsed by every major group involved in flight research . there is a world wide consensus what makes aircraft fly and what makes them crash. in other words you must ”appeal to authority” to get the correct answers. what you are proposing in regard to climate change does not have similar endorsements. no major science group endorses your position.if you were involved in aerodynamics your planes would not get off the ground. and magic carpet rides do not come with with a physics equation or empirical observations. AGW does. this is my last comment. i have enjoyed it. goodbye mr moderator.i hope you learn the meaning of impartiality soon?