Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Richard Muller and the good folks over at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project have released their temperature analysis back to 1750, and are making their usual unsupportable claims. I don’t mean his risible statements that the temperature changes are due to CO2 because the curves look alike—that joke has been widely discussed and discounted, even by anthropogenic global warming (AGW) supporters. Heck, even Michael Mann jumped on him for that one, saying
It seems, in the end–quite sadly–that this is all really about Richard Muller’s self-aggrandizement 🙁
And if anyone should know about “self-aggrandizement”, it’s Michael Mann … but I’m not talking about Muller’s claim that humans caused the warming. No, I mean the following statement:
The historic temperature pattern we observe has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight and cool the Earth’s surface for a few years.
In support of this statement, Richard Muller offers up the following chart:
Figure 1. BEST claims about temperature and volcanoes. SOURCE
So what’s not to like?
Well, first it appears he has included and excluded volcanoes depending on whether they show up in his temperature record. If we look at big eruptions, eruptions with a “volcanic explosively index” (VEI) of 6 or above, since 1750 we have the following volcanoes:
Mount Pinatubo, 1991
Novarupta, 1912
Santa María, 1902
Krakatoa, 1883
Mount Tambora, 1815
Grímsvötn and Laki, 1783
So Muller has left off Santa Maria and Novarupta, and included El Chichon and Cosiguina. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that many of these occurred after or during the temperature drop that they are supposed to have caused … here’s the BEST data including all relevant volcanoes, without the style of overlay that they have used that obscures the actual timing:
Figure 2. BEST temperature data and dates of volcanoes. Red line is a four-year centered Gaussian average of the temperature data. Photo shows Mt. Redoubt in Alaska.
So let’s look at the volcanoes, one by one:
LAKI, 1783: Occurred near the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
TAMBORA, 1815: Occurred at the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
COSIGUINA, 1835: Occurred near the middle of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
KRAKATOA, 1883: Occurred at the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
SANTA MARIA, 1902: Occurred in the middle of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
NOVARUPTA, 1912: I can see why Muller omitted this eruption, which occurred just before a rise in temperature …
EL CHICHON, 1982: Occurred during the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused.
PINATUBO, 1991: This is arguably the only one of the eight volcanoes that could legitimately be claimed to cause a detectable fall in temperature … a whopping fall of 0.15°C or so.
So while volcanoes certainly may cause a minor drop in global temperature, the claim of Richard Muller and the BEST folks that there are “abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions” is simply not true. There are abrupt dips, but they don’t match up with the volcanic eruptions.
w.
[Update] Further reading:
Prediction is hard, especially of the future discusses the GISS analysis of Pinatubo.
Missing the Missing Summer is about the eruption of Tambora.
Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age investigates a claim that the Little Ice Age was triggered by vulcanism.
Volcanic Disruptions plays the game “Spot the Volcano”
[Update] Another way to investigate the question is to look at the average temperature anomaly during the two years before and the two years after the eruption. Figure 3 shows that result.
Figure 3. Average temperature anomaly two years before and two years after the eruptions. Black lines show the standard error of the mean.
After some eruptions it cooled a bit, after some it warmed a bit, and after some there was no change … go figure.
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volcanoes-sorry, no spellcheck, new computer, sticky keys, not able to copy paste, yata, yata, yata
Dr Watson says:
July 30, 2012 at 8:09 am
Hey, Doc, welcome to the thread. Glad to see that you are as addicted to hyperbolic claims as is Mueller.
Are you not even aware of my extensive writings on the subject?
Yes, and see here for how little difference it makes.
Sure, Lamb’s Dust Veil Index (DVI) is a better gauge. I just mentioned the VEI in passing, and I discussed all of the volcanoes that they listed … so what is your issue?
Obviously, you have no clue what I am familiar with …
Oh, please. I’ve made good money and established good science in my life by betting against people “far cleverer” than I am. As Richard Feynmann once commented “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”, and clearly he had your claims to expertise in mind.
The influence of volcanoes on climate is minor and limited, and the current understanding of their effects is not well established or grounded in observations. Read the links listed under “Further Reading” at the end of the head post, there’s a good fellow, and next time don’t enter a thread in such a nasty, unpleasant manner, making a host of accusations without a single citation or scrap of evidence to back up your ranting. That kind of behavior just encourages people to ignore you.
w.
IMAO, the explosion of the uncertain prior to 1850 precludes the possibility of identifying the presence of volcanic eruption signals, and Muller et al. shouldn’t even have attempted to do so. As Willis has shown, attempting to do so has lead to nonsensical conclusions. Major eruptions surely can have short term, small effects on temperatures, but really, these effects are minor compared to the “noise” that may obscure them or, as appears to be the case with many eruptions that occurred when cooling had already started, exaggerate them.
Manfred says:
July 30, 2012 at 10:24 am (Edit)
It is an estimate (source uncertain) of the combined temperature effects of the forcings from CO2 and volcanoes.
w.
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
The issue of vulcanism and cool are of interest to readers of this blog and to me. Cooling and vulcanism seem to go together, but it is not clear what the real connection is. I suspect that a quiet sun can create conditions for eruptions. Not sure the mechanism. As Willis point out most cooling comes before the eruptions.
Nice, Willis.
Your presentation, as usual, is even understandable by us thick-headed types. 🙂
OT-
Word has it that you’re at Burning Man this week;
Last time I passed through Gerlach there was no internet connectoin to be had…?
to be honest I am not sure what is so controversial about claiming temperature drops in response to large volcanic eruptions.
Certainly the Icelanders wouldn’t find the idea particularly novel.
El Chico (2012) retroactively cut in half the US trend since 1979 .
Now THAT was a high-impact eruption that Muller so far has missed.
Duke C. says:
July 30, 2012 at 11:51 am (Edit)
The rumors of my burning have been greatly exaggerated … I’m not in Nevada, near as I can tell.
w.
Scarface says:
July 30, 2012 at 12:15 pm
I assume that’s humor instead of a real volcanic eruption …
w.
Volcanoes always seem to be used as the glue or ductape to hold together a broken theory or hockey stick. I believe the common sense and wisdom demonstrated probably 50 years ago will prevail, from the era before agenda-driven Science co-opted the conversation.
People have never doubted effects from volcanoes, global weather-effects up to a few years or even five years. If that short period of time is redefined as climate then volcanoes do have climate effects. However, global weather-effects up to five years is NOT really climate the way I learned it, because that is not long enough to affect the evolution of some species or much of anything else. One could argue that a human generational length weather pattern of 30-ish years can be considered ‘climate’ because it shapes the thinking and expectations of that generation, but anything much shorter than that is silly IMHO. Clearly, one big problem is the absolute butchering of the damn language. The word climate itself is probably the single biggest casualty of the Climate Wars.
Anyway, let’s just try common sense. If you are living in an extended colder period like the Little Ice Age and are subjected to several medium-to-large volcanic eruptions, you are in a far worse situation than if you are in a warmer period like the 1980’s-1990’s (if Tambora happened in the late 1970’s it would have quite a different effect however, and I wonder if the AGW scam would have been born at all). Expecting a uniform signature in the data from the eruptions while living during different ‘climates’ is illogical. And this is not even addressing the location of the blasts in latitude, the dramatic difference in the size and makeup of blasts themselves, the scientific measurement ability during each timeframe, and the effects it has on the common human lifestyle and technology at the time (no planes to crash or satellites to snap pictures during Tambora and Krakatoa).
The Year without a Summer likely couldn’t have happened if it were not an equatorial eruption and in a long cold period where the vulnerability was already maximized or if it was a much smaller blast like all of the eruptions since. On the other hand, our past few summers (not the current one) just might have been eliminated by a well-placed Tambora sized eruption since they were cool and short compared to the 1990’s in the Northeast USA. The important thing and the difference between a rational person and the crazy climate cult is that I would NOT have used such a missing summer to secure funding to study Global Cooling.
It’s probably really simple: a giant-size super-volcano or large asteroid strike will change the so-called ‘climate’ for centuries or more, a medium-to-large eruption will alter it for years or perhaps decades, a small-medium one will affect it for weeks or months, and the small ones barely make the news anymore. Their biggest affect may be on the psyche of the pop-scientist of the given time period, and perhaps should be used as Rorschach tests to flush out the fake scientists from the real ones.
More seriously though, I think the biggest lesson is really that we are seeing the limitations of the data, and of statistics in general because you can only do so much examination of a set of numbers before you need to alter and change them to squeeze out the desired result.
If volcanoes affect temperatures, then it should be obvious in the records. The comments above about the reductions in solar irradiance should not be taken lightly and the impact on the stratosphere/ozone layer are clear enough. There should be a definitive signal but there is not in most cases.
So either:
– the volcanoes impact is less than expected; or,
– the temperature records are not accurate; or,
– the climate responds in a way to offset some of the impacts.
It could easily be all three of those.
Sorry Willis, it won’t happen again. Long day without result overhere.
If it was anything, it was metaphorically. I didn’t mean to upset you.
But when I saw El Chichon I had to look twice, that’s all.
WUWT always makes my day. I would be lost without it. So bring ’em on!
Mt. St. Helens is just 102 miles to the SW of me. When it exploded I lived 250 miles away, farther east. The sky covering cloud – at first we were just on the southern edge of it – is not something one can forget. However, many years ago (9/24/1950) the sky in western Pennsylvania darkened in somewhat the same manner — lasted longer, and I was a lot younger – but caused from fires burning in western Canada. It seem like a big deal at the time.
http://the-red-thread.net/dark-day.html
The “yearly” temp-line on the Berkeley chart at the top of this post shows a drop following 1950. Perhaps the particles do not reach the altitude of a large volcanic explosion, and thus have less lasting effects. But if one (that being Dr. R. M.) is going to attribute climate disruption to blotting out the sun, why not pay attention to fires also?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I read Dr. Watson’s comments @ur momisugly 8:09 and had three thoughts:
A. This person must be Willis’ big brother and is trying to remind him of the time he had the youngster stick his tongue on a freezing flag pole so everyone around could get a good laugh; or
B. The person just emerged from a parallel universe with different chemistry and physics and no knowledge of recent Earth science and the documentation thereof. Or,
C. Dr. Watson is a crank.
Willis E’s response @ur momisugly 10:42 does not confirm ‘A’ leading me to make the attribution to ‘B’ or ‘C.’ I am just a bit skeptical of parallel universes, however.
[SNIP: Policy -REP
Bernie McCune says:
July 30, 2012 at 6:50 am
Thanks, Bernie, observations are golden. My point all along has not been that volcanoes don’t reduce the insolation, it’s clear that they do. What I keep trying to get across is that the climate system reacts to changes, following Le Chatelier’s principle, in the opposite direction of the forcing. For example:
DATA SOURCE
Note that, despite the fact that you observed the fine ash several weeks after the eruption, the temperature did not drop below the temperature at the time of the eruption for another five months. And other than one very cold month a year later, after you say that the ash cloud had totally dissipated, there was no anomalous cooling from the eruption.
w.
viejecita says:
July 30, 2012 at 4:55 am
St. Helens, by many measurements, was pretty small. It sucked if you were at the wrong place, of course.
Tambora coughed up 25 cubic miles of debris, St Helens only 1, and maybe only 1 cubic km.
Also, those Indonesian volcanoes are good for lots of SO2, and that’s what’s important for keeping the stratosphere hazy for the next year or so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index pegs St. Helens at VEI 5, below Willis’ cutoff.
Willis,
You state,
“PINATUBO, 1991: This is arguably the only one of the eight volcanoes that could legitimately be claimed to cause a detectable fall in temperature … a whopping fall of 0.15°C or so.”
Yet, your temperature anomaly graph shows it warming after Pinatubo. This seems contradictory to me. I don’t claim to be statistically literate. So, can you tell me what I am missing.
Thanks
Le Chatelier’s principle does not predict a return to the previous equilibrium following a change to the system. It predicts the establishment of a new equilibrium. Moreover, it is a principle that is applicable to thermodynamically closed systems, which climate is not.
I made comments on WUWT over 2yrs ago saying that many large eruptions occur on warming bursts following very cold seasons. And also here: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/volcanos-dont-cause-global-cooling/
Often the cooling from stratospheric aerosols will trigger an El Nino episode and mask the cooling at an inter-annual scale.
Willis
I completely agree with you that the climate system tends to react to dramatic changes in order to restore balance. I just thought that it was quite remarkable that the level of surface irradiance dropped by about 100 w/m^2 over the short period of maximum ash concentration (serveral months) while all that we sensed were very beautiful sunsets. This is especially interesting when there are climate scientists who note CO2 forcings of a few watts/m^2 that are expected to destroy the planet. Thanks for the NM data that showed very little direct effect. It does not surprise me and it confirms our understanding of a robust climate system. My experience of irradiance data with clear humid days much less what surface irradiance does when clouds move in supports your idea of a tropical cloud control (or simply a global cloud control) climate mechanism. Here in NM on late summer days we get tropical island like storms (generally not as dramatic). I spent a year in the Seychelles (Indian Ocean) and watched the “march” of a real monsoonal flow. What an amazing climate (control)mechanism that is. Hundreds of inches of rain each year. Here in the desert 12 or 15 inches is a good year. Thanks for your continuing effort to show us the data and help us interpret it.
Bernie
claimsguy says: “Hey, Jorge! Do you have a source for that “volcanoes emit far more CO2….” comment? Just curious. Because that sounds like kind of a big deal.”
I sure thought so, the half dozen times I’ve given the links over the past two years. Never heard a ‘kersploosh’ afterwards though. First, how many volcanoes are there? (Answer: oodles):
http://iceagenow.com/Three_Million_Underwater_Volcanoes.htm
Second, you may wonder how much CO2 a volcano emits. How could we measure that without capturing an entire eruption? It turns out Lake Nyos captured essential all of the seepage from the volcanic vents beneath it for years. See figures from Schmid, Halbwachs, & Wuest (2006), of 18 liters/sec of CO2-rich saline water, with 420 mmol/liter of CO2. [I had an online link to Schmid et al, but she’s dead, Jim.] I calculate 187 million SCF of CO2 annually for Lake Nyos alone, or 8.1 gigatons/year of carbon (as C) for all volcanoes, world-wide, assuming the Lake Nyos seep is typical, not counting land-based volcanoes.
Compare that to typical mainstream science figures, Gerlach 2012(?): http://www.livescience.com/14591-carbon-dioxide-emissions-humans-volcanoes.html Gerlach estimates 0.04 to 0.12 GT of C/year [as C], world-wide. Quite a difference, two full orders of magnitude. [8 GT/yr is significant compared to human emissions, currently estimated at 35 GT C/year.] See EOS (14 Jun 2011) for more info on the “official” (non-skeptic) views regarding volcanic emissions. [thanks to CO2Science for the reference].
Note: It is estimated that the Lake Nyos eruption released an accumulated 100 million cubic meters (at STP) of CO2, killing 1748 people over an irregular area roughly 25 miles in diameter. Information on the tragedy: http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Nyos.html Similar deaths might occur with the failure of a carbon capture system, should anyone be so foolish as to build one.
Fred Fighter says:
July 30, 2012 at 3:07 pm (Edit)
Thanks, Fred. All I meant was that as with the Le Chatelier principle, the direction of the response was towards the previous equilibrium (negative feedback). Sorry for the lack of clarity. I would have more accurately described it as following the Constructal Law, but not many folks know about that.
All the best,
w.
The first plot (Figure 1) shows the average land temperature to be about 9°C.
It was my understanding that the average global temperature is 15°C.
What am I missing?
BTW, Figure 1 is not the same as this Muller plot – I guess they read WUWT. Too bad they didn’t fix their press release!
I also noticed from the pdf that Robert A. Rohde – the person who created many of the wikipedia global warming plots – is also a member of Muller’s team. In particular, you might recognize this one since it has been used in a number of WUWT articles.
The tropics, largest land and ocean zone on the planet, at much higher temps than the US?
There may be some locales whose average matches the global figure, but they are few, and not particularly relevant to anywhere else.