radiative (solar-volcanic) forcing. The purple line shows the CO2 concentration (right axis). b, Shown are the global mean temperature (red), and the global mean precipitation intensity (blue) simulated in the forced run with the ECHO-G model. (p.p.m., parts per million.)
From the University of Hawaii ‑ SOEST, more modeling mania for the future.
New research shows complexity of global warming
Greenhouse gases versus solar heating
Global warming from greenhouse gases affects rainfall patterns in the world differently than that from solar heating, according to a study by an international team of scientists in the January 31 issue of Nature. Using computer model simulations, the scientists, led by Jian Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Bin Wang (International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa), showed that global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.
The team examined global precipitation changes over the last millennium and future projection to the end of 21st century, comparing natural changes from solar heating and volcanism with changes from man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Using an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model that simulates realistically both past and present-day climate conditions, the scientists found that for every degree rise in global temperature, the global rainfall rate since the Industrial Revolution has increased less by about 40% than during past warming phases of the earth.
Why does warming from solar heating and from greenhouse gases have such different effects on global precipitation?
“Our climate model simulations show that this difference results from different sea surface temperature patterns. When warming is due to increased greenhouse gases, the gradient of sea surface temperature (SST) across the tropical Pacific weakens, but when it is due to increased solar radiation, the gradient increases. For the same average global surface temperature increase, the weaker SST gradient produces less rainfall, especially over tropical land,” says co-author Bin Wang, professor of meteorology.
But why does warming from greenhouse gases and from solar heating affect the tropical Pacific SST gradient differently?
“Adding long-wave absorbers, that is heat-trapping greenhouse gases, to the atmosphere decreases the usual temperature difference between the surface and the top of the atmosphere, making the atmosphere more stable,” explains lead-author Jian Liu. “The increased atmospheric stability weakens the trade winds, resulting in stronger warming in the eastern than the western Pacific, thus reducing the usual SST gradient—a situation similar to El Niño.”
Solar radiation, on the other hand, heats the earth’s surface, increasing the usual temperature difference between the surface and the top of the atmosphere without weakening the trade winds. The result is that heating warms the western Pacific, while the eastern Pacific remains cool from the usual ocean upwelling.
“While during past global warming from solar heating the steeper tropical east-west SST pattern has won out, we suggest that with future warming from greenhouse gases, the weaker gradient and smaller increase in yearly rainfall rate will win out,” concludes Wang.
Citation:
Jian Liu, Bin Wang, Mark A. Cane, So-Young Yim, and June-Yi Lee: Divergent global precipitation changes induced by natural versus anthropogenic forcing. Nature, 493 (7434), 656-659; DOI: 10.1038/nature11784.
=============================================================
Full paper here: http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nature11784
Volcanism, the unknown forcing. Nobody knows what the average flux is from the volcanic core out to space, how it varies temporally and spatially. It could easily equal other forcings but we have a paucity of measurements. Pity the PR release doesn’t go further on what they mean by volcanism.
Please provide proof temperatures today are higher than during medieval period 900 -1200 BP.
“showed that global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.”
I can understand proxies for temperature during the MWP – a subject obviously beyond the grasp of Mann and his ‘maths’, but a proxy for rainfall? Rainfall records were not particularly good 800-1,000 years ago!
So, just make it up as you go along, just like most ‘climate science’.
Are temperatures higher now than they were in the Medieval Warm Period?
“Using computer model simulations -” … “Our climate model simulations show -”
I feel sorry for climatologists.
The climate is big and slow, so they can’t test their theories with experiments on the physical universe like proper physicists do. Instead they have to live in “The Matrix” and do all their science in a made-up virtual world.
Now, if we could harvest their energy while they were in there…
This will be the coming meme, “it’s more complex than we thought.”. The new strategy will be managing the walk back. Sceptics should turn and assault through. After this tiresome and sorry season of “The great global warming caper”, does anyone really want to sit through the same fellow travelers performing “Biocrisis! Biocrisis! ” or “Sence and Sustainability”? In the age of the Internet, the recommendation from Sun Tzu “always leave your enemy a path of escape” is not practical. A number of those that supported the “cause” are likely to experience significant upset in the coming year. I feel it is better to get it over quickly, than draw the end out.
“Of course, I am not suggesting that a more stable atmosphere can in any way imply that more extreme weather events are less likely”, he forgot to add.
No! Not complex at all. David Attenborough explains it.
Basically the climate is modelled by a green line and a yellow line. The green line is the climate without human produced CO2 and that is a rather trivial model because all it requires is the input of volcanoes and the sun … and a few hundred other parameters available here.
( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/ )
You then add in the effect of CO2 to this simple model and you get the yellow line.
Simple.
Thats the fun part of climate sciences they don’t understand. If you use false data tho make a model you can only get a false model. This one is all so heavy hockestickt by saying that now its warmer then in the MWP it’s simply not warmer so the hole thing is a peace of grape.
Confused. It says that the whole globe never gets more than 3mm of rain a day (in the figure). How is that possible?
I see one big problem here: They claim that the warming is stronger in the east Pacific than in the west – but as Bob Tisdale shows again and again – for several decades there has been no warming at all in the east Pacific.
As soon as GHG’s are mentioned we know that the rest is rubbish. The GHG theory is not built on science it violates both 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics so cannot happen. The sun is the ONLY heat input into the climate system.
Will the Hawaii ‘scientists’ explain why a desert, very dry, is far hotter than a rainforest at the same latitude. According to the GHG theory the reverse should be true.
It is about time these people got out of their cosy rooms and looked at reality.
As for warming: if you click on WUWT’s World Climate Widget, for UAH an anomaly of minus 0.01 degree Celsius is displayed for January 2013, another 0.2 degree down from December 2012.
I wonder if and how the modelists can link this to increasing CO2 …..
PocketOED1925:
Model, to fashion after, a representation of thing or object. to work into shape.
Simulation, to feign, pretend, wear the guise of, or act the part of, shadowy likeness or mere pretence, unreal thing.
Representation, work of art portraying something, calling of attention to something, place likeness before, make out to be.
Remember you Virginian Colonials et al, these are not my words, but theirs!!!! Just one tiny wee flaw in the paper, it is based on the somewhat arrogant presumption that they know all there is to know about climate science, what drives it, what influences are major or minor, etc.
(BTW just thought I’d ask, are you chaps & chappesses getting along alright in the colonies without us?)
Alan the Brit 😉
But today the Sydney Morning Herald reported on yet another study from the University of Adelaide saying that rainfall intensity will increase with global warming…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rainfall-intensity-to-increase-with-global-warming-study-20130201-2doro.html
Is this another attempt by the Chinese, who seem increasingly to be the authors of these ‘studies’, to dumb us down to the point that we don’t know which way is up any more? In none of these studies is there any practical way to test their hypothesis (i.e. WAG, without the S for Scientific). Just the “computer model says so, so it must be so” scenario.
I can now say that I have lost what little ‘faith’ I had left in the pseudo-science of climatology.
On informing my bank manager that my computer (Excel) says I have more money than the monthly statement says, his response was “My computer says ‘No’!”. Turns out, the bank’s computer had made a serious error. It was contributing lots of warmth to the atmosphere while producing vast errors in output, due to errors in input. The climate modelers could learn a lot from my bank.
So very many weak links it defies belief that any two hold together at all, never mind form a chain. My skept-o-meter is pegged.
John Marshall says:
”Will the Hawaii ‘scientists’ explain why a desert, very dry, is far hotter than a rainforest at the same latitude. According to the GHG theory the reverse should be true.”
Actually, GHG “theory” predicts that the desert would cool faster than the rainforest and it does.
IMO, this “paper” is just laying the foundation of explaining away the failed predictions of massive positive feedbacks from warming. Basically, they’ll be able to say “we didn’t know GHG forcing and solar forcing were different wrt water vapor / clouds (precipitation)” and go on being alarmist on something else like ocean “acidification”.
Where did this snippet of information come from?
What could have caused the allegedly localized and very warm period in Europe and left the rest of the planet alone? Now, here are the ‘localized’ effects of this period from the Mann himself. I accuse temperature of several centuries of discrimination. 😉
Just another climate model study. No basis in reality.
Here is the longest instrumental precipitation record fro England&Wales since 1766:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/pHadEWP_monthly_qc_mean1a.png
Please show me any foot print of “greenhouse gases forcing” in it. These are hard local data, no questionable proxies or, alas, computer models.
Wilt, I think you read the Jan 2011 figure, Jan 2013 isn’t out yet.
“Global warming – more complex than we thought”
[snip . . when commenting try and include some useful content . . mod]
OT but maybe relevant. Has anybody noticed that lately a “Global Warming” search in Google news is getting less and less biased towards the AGW fanaticos? ie more skeptical stories appearing on MSM etc…
Correction: Steveta_uk you are right, the number on the climate widget refers to January 2011 (by the way it might be time to update the data that are displayed when clicking on the widget). Sorry for the mistake.
Both Arctic and Antarctic ice isotopes say the Medieval Warming Period was warmer than the present. The greatest heat at present seems to be between the ears of tax-and-reg types.
John West says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:26 am
“Actually, GHG “theory” predicts that the desert would cool faster than the rainforest and it does.”
Yes, but don’t forget to mention that the GH gas in this case is water vapor, or the lack there of.
Let’s see .. they claim the atmosphere will produce less rain and be more stable. That completely refutes the claims of extreme weather. From now on when anyone tells you that climate change creates more extreme weather simply point them at this study and tell them they are denying peer reviewed science.
If they can use junk science to make claims we can certainly use junk science to refute them.
At “Using computer model simulations,…” I stopped reading. Why don’t these people just say “We don’t know.”?
My knee-jerk reaction to this story is not to heap scorn on it. It suggests a plausible mechanism for the climate stability of the last decade. In addition the study contradicts the alarmist predictions of catastrophic increases in rainfall, and favors the skeptic cause.
I would like to see how Liu et al account for the lack of a “fingerprint.”
Perhaps there is some subtle message here. Climate models with positive feedback would have to have enhanced evaporation and precipitation, and if this isn’t in the records, would have to be explained somehow. This study would suggest that CO2 does not create extra H2O vapor, so less positive feedback?
For mine, 300 hundred watts/m2 long range radiation from the atmosphere raises the surface temperature by 30 degrees K, so an extra 2 watts isn’t going to do enough to be noticed outside the measurement noise.
Here we go again. If the authors of the article wish someone to take their assertions and their model seriously then I am sure they will be willing to give us their global precipitation predictions.
If I was feeling generous then I might initially even accept some “projections” in lieu of predictions.
“Using an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model that simulates realistically both past and present-day climate conditions….”
My eyes rolled so hard, my ocular muscles cramped and I’ll be seeing double for a week.
Climate Models are based on inaccurate and manipulated assumptions of chaotic systems not well understood, by grant-funded scientists that are paid to adjust the parameters to get a predetermined result so they can keep their jobs.
What could POSSIBLY go wrong with scenario?…
Ah, but “Using computer model simulations, the scientists . . . showed that global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period . . . ” See? It was evidence! It’s better than present-day “reality”; it’s a time machine! With a little tweaking, it will doubtless show us Will Shakespeare subcontracting out his plays to . . . Well, we won’t give it away; that’s for next week’s PR^ 2 (Peer-Revealed Press Release).
/Mr Lynn
At least they made a point of mentioning it is all a modelling exercise…
“…For the same global surface temperature increase the latter pattern produces less rainfall, notably over tropical land, which explains why in the model the late twentieth century is warmer than in the Medieval Warm Period (around AD 1000–1250) but precipitation is less…..”
And of course, Mann is the main source of the MWP being cooler than today, based on his weighted proxy sourced models…..
Science 2009 Vol: 326:1256-1260. DOI: 10.1126/science.1177303
Global signatures and dynamical origins of the little ice age and medieval climate anomaly
Mann, M. E.
Intriguing to see how few proxies are available stretching back to the the MWP, and how they are weighted, and how much ‘modeled cooling’ there is in areas where proxies aren’t available … http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2009/11/25/326.5957.1256.DC1/Mann.SOM.pdf
And the solar forcing has the usual problem that recent values are assumed to be significantly higher than around 1900, although solar activity now [and recently] is on par with what it was a century ago.
Any Study starting with the premise that current warming is GHG based is GIGO before it starts.
Two of the institutions named are Hawaii University and Columbia University, so I’m inclined not to believe that explanation. If I was looking for a conspiracy theory I would more likely guess it to be an attempt to influence China and their fossil fuel consumption, rather than the other way round.
Or possibly an attempt to ingratiate themselves with influential people in China.
That said, my pet theory, and null-hypothesis, remains one of gross general incompetence.
@ John Marshall February 1, 2013 at 2:54 am
Will the Hawaii ‘scientists’ explain why a desert, very dry, is far hotter than a rainforest at the same latitude.
But a desert cools significantly at night, giving it a large Diurnal Temperature Range. So whilst its daytime temperature will be warmer (than a rainforest), its daily mean temperature may not be.
“Global warming from greenhouse gases”. Proof? It’s like assuming the earth is flat, and writing a paper based on it.
[ Konrad says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:36 am
This will be the coming meme, “it’s more complex than we thought.”. ]
My initial reaction exactly.
It’s more complex than we thought, and it’s going to be worse than we think.
Alan the Brit says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:02 am
(BTW just thought I’d ask, are you chaps & chappesses getting along alright in the colonies without us?)
Alan the Brit 😉
———————————
Actually Alan we could use some help but I don’t think your leader’s ideas are any smarter than Lisa Jackson’s.
She must have sold all of her oil stocks and invested in carbon credits or like your leaders invested in marine hazard bird thrashers.
I wonder if all the major pension plans in the world are heavily invested in a “green future”?
cn
“we suggest that with future warming from greenhouse gases, the weaker gradient and smaller increase in yearly rainfall rate will win out”
Okay, fine. And what do they predict?
“Adding long-wave absorbers, that is heat-trapping greenhouse gases, to the atmosphere decreases the usual temperature difference between the surface and the top of the atmosphere, making the atmosphere more stable,” explains lead-author Jian Liu.
============
Rubbish. That directly contradicts the atmospheric “hot spot” predicted by all climate models. Nowhere is it predicted that AGW will cause the surface to warm faster than the atmosphere.
One of the main predictions of AGW is the GHG warms the atmosphere first, then the surface warms as a result of the lapse rate tying the atmosphere to the surface.
In contrast, it is solar heating that heats the surface first, then the atmosphere warms. Thus one way to detect if warming is due to GHG or solar influences is to study if the atmosphere lags the surface of the surface lags the atmosphere.
****
showed that global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.
****
Mule-fritters. Tell that to the Vikings and many others…
And they know how much rain fell around the world during the MWP how?
It is really worth going back to assess Mann’s original contention that the MWP was ‘cooler than the present’ (of course, he has to rename it the MCA, the Medieval Climate Anomoly, as otherwise the whole thing would fail the Orwellian test).
Available here: (needs a log in – no cost) Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly. Michael E. Mann, Zhihua Zhang, Scott Rutherford, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Drew Shindell, Caspar Ammann, Greg Faluvegi, Fenbiao Ni
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5957/1256.short
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5957/1256.full.pdf
Note Figure 2 – the top figures showing the temperature anomaly map of the world for the MCA (compared to the 1961 to 1990 period) ..and the weighted proxies on the right…to me it is an incredible construct: Note all the blue (cooler than recent times) on the map.
Starting in northern America we see a cluster of proxies – by the temperature anomaly map, all apparently warmer than now, except for one cooler site. Down to the Caribbean … neutral, but heavily weighted..
Peru, Ecuador, looks like it was warm there…. back up to Greenland … a very warm spot…, across to Europe, only two proxies, one heavily weighted, but both warmer, across to northern Russia …one isolated proxy with an isolated warmer spot … to central China, there is a cooler spot …then head a bit east in China..another very hot spot…then all the way down to Tasmania and New Zealand – Tasmania is cooler, NZ is warmer than now…… Back to Africa, 3 proxies, one cooler (and heavily weighted) and one very lightly weighted and warmer, and one neutral…
Then look at all the modeled cooling on the map … right across central Asia, based on 4 proxies (!!), all of which were warmer except one… ALL of the Southern Ocean, the southern Indian Ocean, and southern Atlantic oceans were supposedly much cooler, (based on Tasmania, and three proxies in Africa?!!) All of the eastern Pacific is shown as cooler, … based on a string of proxies in the western Americas, which were mainly warmer, and perhaps eastern China ..warmer also?
Now I do appreciate the vast effort and detailed measurements and complicated science which have gone into this effort, but to me it is rather like building an intricate full scale model of a Boeing 747 with Lego blocks (a truly mighty effort indeed) and then selling flight tickets to London.
Joe Public says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:46 am
@ John Marshall February 1, 2013 at 2:54 am
Will the Hawaii ‘scientists’ explain why a desert, very dry, is far hotter than a rainforest at the same latitude.
=========
But a desert cools significantly at night, giving it a large Diurnal Temperature Range. So whilst its daytime temperature will be warmer (than a rainforest), its daily mean temperature may not be.
=========
As well, the rainforest air contains significantly more energy than the desert at the same temperature due to water vapor. Thus it is meaningless to talk about temperature without also talking about humidity. 100F at 0% RH is much different than 100F at 100% RH. Something that makes something called “average global temperature” completely meaningless.
You cannot average the temperature between two places with different relative humidity and arrive at a meaningful result. This is especially true when considering land temperatures. Ocean temperatures are somewhat more meaningful because the humidity is more constant.
So when the Sun heats thangs up without the aid of greenhouse gases, the air is cranky, but when greenhouse gases fouls that process up, the air becomes nice’n peaceful like. Dang. Can’t be have’n that now can we, cuz it be opposite of the current talk’n points for political action. But then I s’pose Ph.D. types don’t much worry ’bout us flat Earthers notice’n the contradiction.
lsvalgaard says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:31 am
although solar activity now [and recently] is on par with what it was a century ago.
===========
And temperatures have not increased for 16 years and counting, in spite of massive increases in CO2 as China and India have industrialized.
Coincidence? Maybe. But it certainly indicates that CO2 is not the main driver of temperature. We should have seen a massive increases in temperature over the past 10 years due to industrialization and land use changes. It hasn’t happened, contrary to the predictions of the majority of climate scientists. Hansen, Mann, Jones, the IPCC, they got it dreadfully wrong and billions in taxpayer money have been wasted in the process.
When a theory fails to predict correctly, it is a failed theory. All that is required is a single contradiction to disprove a theory. This is the very heart of science and the scientific method. Any example that contradicts the theory is proof the theory is wrong.
This is completely Ignored by consensus climate science because climate science is not a science any more than political science is a science. Climate science is the political process of collecting confirmations for a belief, while ignoring contrary evidence.
mem says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:04 am
But today the Sydney Morning Herald reported on yet another study from the University of Adelaide saying that rainfall intensity will increase with global warming…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rainfall-intensity-to-increase-with-global-warming-study-20130201-2doro.html
=======
Global warming predicts that rainfall will both increase and decrease. Thus any change in rainfall is evidence of global warming. If rainfall remains the same it is evidence of pent up rainfall, that can be expected to increase or decrease in the future due to global warming.
Here is a wiki on a method at least as accurate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex
But why does warming from greenhouse gases and from solar heating affect the tropical Pacific SST gradient differently?
“Adding long-wave absorbers, that is heat-trapping greenhouse gases, to the atmosphere decreases the usual temperature difference between the surface and the top of the atmosphere, making the atmosphere more stable,” explains lead-author Jian Liu. “The increased atmospheric stability weakens the trade winds, resulting in stronger warming in the eastern than the western Pacific, thus reducing the usual SST gradient—a situation similar to El Niño.”
I thought that the top of the atmosphere always had and always will have the same temperature.
Didn’t know we were warming space too!
They’ve been telling us to expect MORE rainfall as a consequence of global warming. Indeed, it is now required in the UK for developers to include increased precipitation in their flood mitigation reports. If they now say, “sorry, we were wrong about that – you should use LESS precipitation,” changing their story from one year to the next, it gives the impression that the science is anything but settled, or that they’re talking out of their rear ends.
Warmer today than the MWP? Dr.Liu, your the Mann!
John Marshall,
“explain why a desert, very dry, is far hotter than a rainforest at the same latitude.”
I would say (just guessin’ here), that the rainforest is less hot than the desert because it is mostly covered in dense cloud, which reflects sunlight back into space, while the desert has clear blue skies, and so receives much more insolation.
Can you explain why the desert gets very cold at night – much colder than the rainforest does at night?
Silly science deserves a silly answer, therefore…
My computer model says Wang is Wrong.
lsvalgaard says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:31 am
And the solar forcing has the usual problem that recent values are assumed to be significantly higher than around 1900, although solar activity now [and recently] is on par with what it was a century ago.
So what has changed since a century ago
There is very little of the global warming in the Equatorial region, where the TSI is the most significant factor, in contrast the greatest anomalies come from the poles, where the TSI input is very much more limited. Further more the largest temperature anomaly comes from the Arctic region itself
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AGT.htm
So if the TSI was more or less constant there are only two other alternatives that might effected the higher latitudes of the N. Hemisphere:
– Rise in CO2, but as it was shown many times CO2 was high and even higher in the past
– Changes in the Arctic as the engine driving the polar jet stream
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arctic.htm
Because Greenland is so much greener today than when the Vikings colonized it.
ATTEMPTS to simulate realistically, and that’s if we give them the benefit of the doubt, but their unscientific assertions make that difficult. This kind of “we’ve got it nailed” talk is a stylistic mark of the current results-oriented “consensus.”
Their thesis is obvious enough, and doesn’t seem to be anything new:
GCR-cloud theory and UV-shift-cloud theory follow a similar path, seeing the change in cloud cover as modulating the amount of direct insolation of the surface, as opposed to GHG theory with its predicted (but unobserved) upper troposphere hot spot.
But given the way these guys talk they must be using the standard GCMs, which assume that solar variation has one fortieth the forcing effect of CO2 over the 1850-2010 calibration period, so their modeling would have nothing to add to the simple logic their premise.
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man.”
Steven Mosher says: February 1, 2013 at 7:54 am
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man.”
Indeed so, Steven.
But does it look like the failure of their argument and the distinct lack of proof is swaying them from their mission?
They reported:
“Using computer model simulations, the scientists, led by Jian Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Bin Wang (International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa), showed that global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.”
Peter Miller says (so many others agree): So, just make it up as you go along, just like most ‘climate science’.
I agree Peter–
1. apparently they did not udnerstand that the models aren’t predicting anything particularly well.
2. It’s raining quite a bit now–many warmists are claiming way more rainfall becasue of GHG warming–so how would they know it has increased less????
“Places now wetter than the historical average include Northern Europe, eastern North and South America, and northern and central Asia. Northern Scandinavia and South and North Korea recorded precipitation increases of 3-15 percent per decade between 1979 and 2005” http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-effects/rain-and-snow.html
“…an 8 percent increase in rainfall stemming from global warming ” http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html
3. And they didn’t get the mssage that it was really warmer in MWP??? At least in the NH.
“Once again the fear-mongering hoards of lay-climatologists are denouncing the importance of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), or Medieval Climate Optimum as some refer to it.” http://www.thegwpf.org/doug-hoffman-medieval-warm-period-under-attack-again/
Geeze!
PS–to Alan the Brit–I like “chappesses” but to answer your questions–no, not alright, after winning our independence so long ago, we are now going back to Imperialsim.
ferd berple says:
February 1, 2013 at 6:51 am
“although solar activity now [and recently] is on par with what it was a century ago.”
And temperatures have not increased for 16 years and counting, in spite of massive increases in CO2 as China and India have industrialized.
Coincidence? Maybe. But it certainly indicates that CO2 is not the main driver of temperature.
It also indicates that the Sun is not the main driver
vukcevic says:
February 1, 2013 at 7:19 am
So if the TSI was more or less constant there are only two other alternatives
Shows your lack of imagination [or knowledge].
Mosh
Here’s the rest of the quote;
‘…With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”
Have you suddenly got religion or something?
tonyb
Very nice, I see desperation, we need to get rid of the medieval warm period.
Some evidence as to how those viking artifacts coming out from under the ice got there, with those cooler than today temperatures would be nice.
One glance gave me the value of this paper, it boils down to,assuming that the hockey stick is true,therefore..
And the proxy for rainfall?
Looks a lot like only the useful idiots are still publishing in the climatology world..
Meet the new symbol for model predicted alarmism. http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/environment/article_7b5f0760-6c2c-11e2-ab77-0019bb2963f4.html
The commenters who note that this seems incompatible with the extreme weather meme have my sympathy. Could it be that sensitivity (temp change per unit “forcing” change) is higher for solar than GHG’s? Perish the thought…
the scientists found that for every degree rise in global temperature, the global rainfall rate since the Industrial Revolution has increased less by about 40% than during past warming phases of the earth.
===========================
So they are saying global rainfall has been static for the past 16 years
Patrick says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:04 am (Edit)
At “Using computer model simulations,…” I stopped reading. Why don’t these people just say “We don’t know.”?
#################
since you cannot do controlled experiments on the planet, you have two options as an observational scientist ( climate science is an observational science and not a labratory science )
1. Shrug your shoulders, and say “we can only describe the past and say nothing about the future” ( opps you are a historian not a scientist)
2. Make predictions about the future based on
a) statistics of the past
b) models.
The other subtle aspect of this is that one always implies “we dont know” when one puts uncertainty figures on predictions. In one sense science never knows, it knows as Feynman would say only what is more likely and what is less likely.
I’m also reminded of the aerospace engineers who I worked with.
Skeptic: “how many gs will the plane take?
Engineer: our models say 9gs, but we build in a 50% safety factor
Skeptic; a model? a model? why don’t you just say you don’t know?
Engineer: Well, because its my job to make the best estimate I can based on the best understanding we have and the best tools we have. I know my estimate will be wrong, but,
we learn and progress. That’s why we have a safety factor. After we build the plane we will
put it in a jig and shake it and bend it until it breaks and hopefully improve the models.
Skeptic: can the plane survive being shot by another plane?
Engineer: We’ll COVART says we have a high probability of surviving.
Skeptic; COVART?
Engineer: yes we model the survivability of aircraft to threats
Skeptic; model? model? why dont you just say you dont know/
Engineer: well, we know somethings better than others. Its incomplete knowledge but we
can identify problems and try to fix them. An estimate is better than shrugging
your shoulders and saying you dont know.
Skeptic: Just shoot the plane. test it.
Engineer: yes of course we do live fire to test it, but you cannot test all possibilities. Maybe we take 5 F-18s out to the desert and do live fire. Do you know what that costs? There is no way we can experiement with every bullet and every condition, so we have to model.
in some sciences you cannot afford the test and you cannot control the test conditions.
So, you have a choice:
1. head in the sand. we know nothing.
2. Our best reasoning ( modelling ) says the following.
Folks interested in live fire can see this
http://jaspo.csd.disa.mil/archives.html
Have you suddenly got religion or something?
tonyb
#############
tony, religion? no. But you’d be surprised the places you find interesting forms of argument.
I read everything.
‘But does it look like the failure of their argument and the distinct lack of proof is swaying them from their mission?”
there is no proof in science and folks who ask for proof need to unfool themselves and read some feyman. Science deals with the likely and the unlikely. proof deals with the possible and impossible.
Sorry to be a stickler for the details about this, but its important
Mosh
You read everything? Even Anna Karenina and Jude the Obscure?
tonyb
Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 8:20 am
“The other subtle aspect of this is that one always implies “we dont know” when one puts uncertainty figures on predictions. ”
That’s why climate scientists run their models hundreds of times so they can in hindsight point to the one model run that resembles reality the most and say “We told you so”.
Like this climate scientist from Switzerland.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/01/31/yellow-science-renowned-climate-modeller-now-claims-temperature-stagnation-is-actually-evidence-of-warming/
And that’s why I would say, fire the lot and don’t give them one more dime; we can’t afford it and they are of absolutely no use.
The IPCC, Steven, BTW, has the political mission of researching the effects of antopogenic global warming. They don’t have the mission of asking themselves whether AGW is real, and they therefore do not add the “we don’t know”. They KNOW; it is their mission statement.
Fire the lot.
Jens Bagh says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:57 am
Please provide proof temperatures today are higher than during medieval period 900 -1200 BP.
###
Mann wrote an oft’ quoted paper on this in 2009, so you know its just got to be true.
Oh, come on people! Deserts heat and cool faster than rain forests because of the specific heat of dry air vice moist air. 1 degree (C or F your choice) change in temperature takes a lot more energy in moist air than dry. Once again people are conflating energy with temperature. Energy is the key to all of this argument. Boltzmann curves are about how fast something loses energy at a specific temperature; specific heat tells how much change of temperature that energy flow will cause in a particular medium. Climate science doesn’t seem to take that into account very often.
I know almost everyone reading at this site knows that bit of information, but I had to get it off my chest. There, I feel better already!
Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 7:54 am
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man.”
####
What does it take to convince a nonreasoning man?
Bruce Cobb says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:51 am
““Global warming from greenhouse gases”. Proof? It’s like assuming the earth is flat, and writing a paper based on it.”
If its a gas that is transparent to incoming solar but opaque to outgoing infrared (water vapor, CO2, ozone), it warms. If its a solid or liquid suspended in the atmosphere (cloud droplets, soot, aerosols) it cools. Trust me. If it were not so, we would be very cold indeed.
Mosher:
The difference is we actually do take airplanes (without all their expensive avionics) out and shoot them, then we shake the dickens out of them to see where they will break. Your whole “engineer” verses “skeptic” strawman was entertaining, but totally misrepresents the test and design processes used in aerospace. We actually do put models in wind tunnels with pieces missing to see how much destruction a plane can survive. We put everything that comes out of the computer models into a scale model and hit it with real aerodynamic forces to check. We even do that for Airliners. The FAA doesn’t like to sign off on something until we can show that we have tested the computer models against the REAL WORLD. Yes, we design virtually everything on the computer these days and we run millions of simulations in the computer to eliminate all the obvious errors, but then we make physical models and run them through the wringer to catch the things that computer models – no matter how complex, miss. Building an airplane is a 100’s of millions of dollars proposition, and we aren’t going to invest a penny into forging composites and aluminum into shape until we are pretty darn sure the thing isn’t going to wind up a test pilot’s death bed. Now about testing lithium-ion battery packs, I have no comment.
Mr Mosher, are you seriously suggesting that mathematical proofs are not science? This post-normal science stuff works really well for soft gooey sociology (and art) but is pure crap for the hard sciences. Now granted, GCM’s are a fine blend of hard physics and all those other gooey pursuits. But your insoluble problem appears to be an inability to recognize that many theories residing in various problem spaces within “climate science” are entirely capable of being discounted as outright wrong because the hard side of the domain is entirely falsifiable. And we then have the luxury of being able to discount the entire body of work because it is easily definable as pure bunkum. And this fine study falls squarely into that domain. The uncertainty levels of this study alone, ensures that it would only ever be laughed at in the schools of math and engineering (where truth, lie and unknown is very much definable).
Espen (February 1, 2013 at 2:50 am) wrote:
“I see one big problem here: They claim that the warming is stronger in the east Pacific than in the west – but as Bob Tisdale shows again and again – for several decades there has been no warming at all in the east Pacific.”
That’s a “problem”?? : ]
Actually, more of an opportunity …
If you put their theory together with Bob Tisdale’s observations, here’s what you’ll deduce:
The LACK of warming in the East Pacific indicates the TRUE anthro-warming signal.
I do not wish to interrupt the sudden – and welcome – ebullience from Steven Mosher on this thread. But my comment is in response to Mr Lynn a few hours ago. My friend, you really should not have mentioned Shakespeare on a thread about a climate modelling paper! This is what you caused me to write…
Blow, blow, thou modelled wind!
Our study does now find
Props for our platitude;
Warming’s Man’s fault, we mean.
Fingerprints can be seen,
At every latitude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! On with the green folly:
Our “science” is failing, but we love the lolly:
Then heigh-ho, the lolly!
These grants are most jolly.
Freeze, freeze thou modelled sky?
No! That would give the lie
To our well-crafted plot.
Children will never know
The sting of ice and snow!
It will be hot, hot, hot.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! On with the green folly:
Our “science” is failing, but we love the lolly:
Then heigh-ho, the lolly!
These grants are most jolly.
This study has uncertainty levels larger than the national debt.
Airplanes are now analogous to planetary climate systems. I’ve seen some interesting ways to account for studies with astronomical uncertainties but that one takes the cake. If it were not Mosh, I would be laughing out loud. But I fear Mosh will have to retort in some clever sounding post-normal way.
Just remembered this discussion here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/
May be helpful…
William H says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:04 am
Is this another attempt by the Chinese, who seem increasingly to be the authors of these ‘studies’, to dumb us down to the point that we don’t know which way is up any more?
William,
It’s great you noticed a glimpse of the trend that starts in the Universities. Check out and you’ll see that 50%-70% of grad students in the science and engineering departments of all major US Universities are from China and India.
I don’t mind this global warming. It was 70 degrees in Baltimore Wednesday, then overnite we got between 2-3 inches of rain! If it has been normal temps, we would have had 18-30 inches of snow! My back thanks you global warming!!! Oh wait, that was just weather wasn’t it?
Darn.
Another not too scientific study. This year : 2013, current CO2 concentration, 395, the lastest figure readable from your charts : 345 (’twas some time ago…). Everything else in the text is heavy on good reasons why, but rather vague when it comes to precise dates. If we stick to phenology, I can’t imagine seeing somebody plucking fruits from olive trees in Paris (France) a thousand years ago the way it is done on a regular basis nowadays.
January 2013 Sunspot number is SSN=62.9, 22 points up on the December 2012 (40.8).
Possible sign of the increased activity?
It doesn’t look like.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN.htm
Polar field has retreated back to negative territory
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
Despite assurances by Dr. Svalgaard this cycle (SC24) looks more like one of two centuries ago (peak around 1817), than one ‘a century ago’ with peak at 1918.
Dalton minimum is on cards (as the monochrome graph in the link above, suggested almost 10 years ago).
“global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.”
— What a baseless assertion.
Walt The Physicist says:
February 1, 2013 at 9:30 am
……
Not to mention all the micro-chips with built and preprogrammed codes to do things you never wanted or suspected. 🙂 (sarc off)
William H says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:04 am
Is this another attempt by the Chinese, who seem increasingly to be the authors of these ‘studies’, to dumb us down to the point that we don’t know which way is up any more? In none of these studies is there any practical way to test their hypothesis (i.e. WAG, without the S for Scientific)….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
S stands for SILLY not scientific in SWAG, especially when talking of CAGW.
John West says:
February 1, 2013 at 3:26 am
John Marshall says:
”Will the Hawaii ‘scientists’ explain why a desert, very dry, is far hotter than a rainforest at the same latitude. According to the GHG theory the reverse should be true.”
Actually, GHG “theory” predicts that the desert would cool faster than the rainforest and it does….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The desert I looked at heated to a higher temp during the day and cooled to a lower temp at night. Over all the average temp in the desert was +8C warmer than the rain forest. What the water vapor did was even out the day/night temperature swings and provide net cooling.
Sleepalot @ July 21, 2012 at 4:53 am pointed out the actual effects of the GHG water vapor on the temperature by comparing high vs low humidity. My comments expanding the idea:
Link 1
Link 2
Nothing beats looking at actual data.
Elizabeth says:
February 1, 2013 at 4:47 am
OT but maybe relevant. Has anybody noticed that lately a “Global Warming” search in Google news is getting less and less biased towards the AGW fanaticos? ie more skeptical stories appearing on MSM etc…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is part of the climb down since they KNOW darn well the temperatures have peaked and are on the way down. Now we just have to figure out what the next crisis will be that they blame on human kind so they can stampede us into the direction they want.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H. L. Mencken
pochas says:
February 1, 2013 at 8:52 am
Bruce Cobb says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:51 am
““Global warming from greenhouse gases”. Proof? It’s like assuming the earth is flat, and writing a paper based on it.”
If its a gas that is transparent to incoming solar but opaque to outgoing infrared (water vapor, CO2, ozone), it warms. If its a solid or liquid suspended in the atmosphere (cloud droplets, soot, aerosols) it cools. Trust me. If it were not so, we would be very cold indeed.
Does it warm? or do the GHG merely retard the rate of heat and energy transfer – thus “keeping” us warm(er)?
vukcevic says:
February 1, 2013 at 10:42 am
Despite assurances by Dr. Svalgaard this cycle (SC24) looks more like one of two centuries ago (peak around 1817), than one ‘a century ago’ with peak at 1918.
SC24 looks very much like SC14, which had half a dozen peaks between 1905 and 1910, ~107 years ago. http://www.leif.org/research/SC5-14-24.png
Perhaps you should try to throttle back verbiage about things you don’t have a grip on.
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 1, 2013 at 12:06 pm
……..
SC 5, 14 and 24 compared
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SC5-14-24.gif
SIDC with no correction
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
pochas says:
February 1, 2013 at 8:52 am
Thanks for explaining the greenhouse effect. That really isn’t the issue, though. The issue is to what extent the increased levels of greenhouse gasses, primarily C02, have caused the recent warming. In theory, they should cause at least some, however the climate is a dynamic system, with negative feedbacks. That is to say, climate’s sensitivity to increased C02 doesn’t appear to be that great.
vukcevic says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:22 pm
SC 5, 14 and 24 compared http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SC5-14-24.gif
SIDC with no correction
1: SC5 data was botched by Wolfer’s dubious ‘adjustment’ of the SSN in 1902. SIDC still reports those [wrong] numbers.
2: There is general agreement in the SSN ‘community’ that correction of the SIDC numbers must be made, so if you plot without correction you are behind the curve.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
So is, apparently, garbage.
Lew Skannen says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:42 am
No! Not complex at all. David Attenborough explains it.
Basically the climate is modelled by a green line and a yellow line. The green line is the climate without human produced CO2 and that is a rather trivial model because all it requires is the input of volcanoes and the sun … and a few hundred other parameters available here.
( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/ )
You then add in the effect of CO2 to this simple model and you get the yellow line.
Simple.
I think you forgot the convergence problem.
Bruce Cobb says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:25 pm
“In theory, they should cause at least some, however the climate is a dynamic system, with negative feedbacks. That is to say, climate’s sensitivity to increased C02 doesn’t appear to be that great.”
You’ve got that right. But stripping away the tech jargon, the 2 ppm per year continuing increase in CO2 had caused no increase in temperature for the last 15+ years, indicating that other factors are in aggregate at least as important and making CO2 only a contributing factor and not the dominant one as has been alleged by the IPCC.
What is the wavelength of a photon?
Box of Rocks says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:38 pm
What is the wavelength of a photon?
It ranges from 10000 m for radio waves to 10^-16 m for gamma rays.
Google “electromagnetic spectrum”.
Box of Rocks says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:38 pm
What is the wavelength of a photon?
###
wavelengeth = planksConstant * C / photonEnergy
Next questions…
So when a molecule of say CO2 bumps into a molecule of N2 what determines the net transfer of energy and how is accomplished?
Also, if I have 2 molecules 1 of CO2 and one of N2 and the are at say 100 degree F and they just happen to be caught in an up draft and are lifted vertically.
What happens and how is there energy transferred?
If by chance the air is still, and then sun sets, and the atmosphere ‘cools’ (the molecules have not moved) what happens in that case?
Why and how are the cases different?
Where does the energy go?
DesertYote:
Does the energy that say CO2 molecule absorbs = photonEnergy?
or is the energy transfer in and out of the molecule non-linear?
And why?
John Marshall:
“The sun is the ONLY heat input into the climate system.”
No, the core of the planet generates heat that travels outwards. The heat comes from four sources:
– Residual heat from the gravitation formation of the planet.
– Heat from radioactive elements decaying in the core and mantle.
– Gravitational friction as the solid core is pulled by the Moon and to a lesser extent the sun and planets.
– Losses from the earth’s electromagnetic system.
There are poor measurements of the heat flux. Parts of the USA have fluxes up to 10Wm-2. Average continental USA flux is estimated at about 250mWm-2 but it is poorly understood what the flux is in other parts of the planet, especially under the oceans.
It is also not known how the flux varies with time.
Volcanism is a forcing in the system, but it is very poorly quantified.
Box of Rocks
February 1, 2013 at 5:12 pm
The total momentum ( mass * velocity as classically defined, there are other defs) of a system is constant. That means that the sum of the momentum of two particles after they interact is the same as it was before they did so, and is independent of the nature of the interaction. Mathematically, momentum is an invariant.
Box of Rocks says:
February 1, 2013 at 5:12 pm
The following may help:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/07/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-light-and-heat/
DesertYote, doesn’t that apply to a totally inelastic collision?
What happens to the energy if the collision is non linear?
Can that be backed up with math?
“Steven Mosher says:
February 1, 2013 at 8:20 am”
And here’s me thinking the science of the climate system on this rock was settled (Read understood and not simulated).
Box of Rocks says:
February 1, 2013 at 8:47 pm
DesertYote, doesn’t that apply to a totally inelastic collision?
Momentum is always conserved in collisions, whether elastic or inelastic. But kinetic energy (1/2mv^2) is only conserved in elastic collisions which we are dealing with in molecular collisions. To test this, note that you cannot hear molecules colliding in a glass jug nor do the molecules warm up due to their collisions. This proves that no energy lost.
P.S. To my earlier reply, I also should have added:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/
Box of Rocks says:
February 1, 2013 at 8:47 pm
DesertYote, doesn’t that apply to a totally inelastic collision?
What happens to the energy if the collision is non linear?
Can that be backed up with math?
###
Velocity is a vector so elastic collision is just simple addition of vectors.
Different branches of mechanics have different ways of defining momentum, but they all play the same role, though quantum mechanics is a bit of an outlier. The mathematical foundations of all of this can get a bit complicated and a proper study would entail a fairly detailed tour of modern math. Don’t forget that much of mathematics was developed as a language to express the rules of mechanics as relieved through experimentation.
Werner Brozek says: February 1, 2013 at 9:57 pm
“….note that you cannot hear molecules colliding in a glass jug…”
Well, not entering the argument here…just pointing out that there are all sorts of wavelengths our ears cannot detect….
Lew Skannen says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:42 am
No! Not complex at all. David Attenborough explains it.
Basically the climate is modelled by a green line and a yellow line. The green line is the climate without human produced CO2 and that is a rather trivial model because all it requires is the input of volcanoes and the sun … and a few hundred other parameters available here.
You then add in the effect of CO2 to this simple model and you get the yellow line.
Simple.
—————————————————————————————————————
If you then look at Keith Briffa`s tree ring study there is a divergence from the dodgy ground temps around 1960, so the model in the above video shows temps not increasing from 1960 which agree with Briffa`s tree rings, has there actually been a temp rise or is it it all down to those dodgy UHI infected numbers. It seems to me that the tree ring proxy`s may be correct after all.
http://s446.beta.photobucket.com/user/bobclive/media/attenborough_zps1fdbe055.jpg.html?sort=6&o=0
http://s446.beta.photobucket.com/user/bobclive/media/800px-Briffa-tree_ring_density_vs_temperature_1880-2000_zps39423dee.jpg.html?sort=6&o=1
in some sciences you cannot afford the test and you cannot control the test conditions.
So, you have a choice:
1. head in the sand. we know nothing.
2. Our best reasoning ( modelling ) says the following.
Folks interested in live fire can see this
http://jaspo.csd.disa.mil/archives.html
As an engineer, modeling the structural performance of an aircraft is cake walk. I can have 3rd year Mechanical Engineering Students design and test aircraft structures till the chickens come home to roost.
Modeling a non linear thermodynamic model of the earth is far more complex task.
“..global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.”
The first clause is a pretty good falsification of the second clause an vice versa.
The absorbed Photons raise the energy level of their respective molecules (symbolized by red outlines).
The energized molecules re-emit the Photons in random directions, some upwards, some downwards, and some sideways. Some of the re-emitted Photons make their way out to Space and their energy is lost there, others back down to the Surface where their energy is absorbed, further heating the Earth, and others travel through the Atmosphere for a random distance until they encounter another GHG molecule.
So when a ‘new’ photon is emitted as the CO2 molecule loses energy – what wavelength is emitted, why and how do we know?
John Marshall says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:54 am
Global warming by GHGs does not require additional heat input; it is a matter of redistribution of the heat; the troposphere warms, the stratosphere cools. (The ocean is involved, too, but I’m trying to keep this simple.) I’m sure you’d answer this by saying that re-radiation is bunk, but if it is bunk, it is bunk regardless of whether the sun is the only heat input, so it would only make sense to point out the latter if you were arguing that global warming, regardless of mechanism, without additional heat input is impossible – but in that case your argument would be grossly inadequate because surely it is conceivable that something could redistribute the heat. The bottom line is that your argument fails with no consideration of the science at all; merely pointing out that global warming theory claims that the warming is a matter of redistribution suffices to kill it as a rebuttal to that theory.
So Mosh, the extension of your argument seems to say that if a model shows there is risk walking on the sidewalk, we should all be made to suit up in padding to protect us in case we fall and in addition, pay a “potential injury tax” for the sidewalk.
Actually, the risk of sidewalk injury is FAR greater than the risk of injury from climate change. So there ya go greenies who are so concerned about what harm we are doing to our children. Make us pay an injury tax on sidewalks.
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 1, 2013 at 1:31 pm
Vuk: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Dr.S: So is, apparently, garbage.
best with ‘full screen’ setting
There still seems to be some lingering doubts about the greenhouse effect (GHE). The GHE is not new; it has been known about, measured, and accounted for in engineering calculations for decades. Although it wasn’t commonly called the greenhouse effect until recently, as I recall we just referred to it as the radiation from the “apparent sky temperature”.
Heat Transfer (lol, literally: Energy Transfer Transfer) in a nutshell is the transfer of energy through a variety of mechanisms/processes including conduction, convection, and radiation.
In a wordy equation format:
[Net Energy Gain] = [Energy In] – [Energy Out] = [Solar (Short Wave) Energy Absorbed] – [Long Wave Energy Emitted] + [Long Wave “backradiation”] – [Evaporation] ± [Convection] ± [Conduction]
Solar (Short Wave) Energy Absorbed = the energy from the sun. Important variables are TSI, location (angle), sky conditions (clear/cloudy), and albedo.
Long Wave Energy Emitted = the energy radiated in proportion to its temperature (Stephan-Boltzmann). Important variables include temperature and emissivity.
Long Wave “Backradiation” = the greenhouse effect. Important variables include sky conditions (clear/cloudy) and relative humidity.
Evaporation = Energy evaporating water (typically). Important variables include mass and heat of vaporization.
Convection = Energy transferred through convection. Important variables include mass, velocity, thermal conductivity, heat capacity, and temperature gradient.
Conduction = Energy transferred through conduction. Important variables include thermal conductivity, mass, heat capacity, and temperature gradient.
If we were just looking at “heat gain” at night of an outside surface it would most likely be negative, therefore, we might look at Heat Loss instead (so it would be positive) and furthermore if we just looked at the radiant part:
[Net Radiant Heat Loss] = [Long Wave Energy Emitted] – [Long Wave “Backradiation” (GHE)]
http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20Radiative%20Cooling.pdf
Note that clouds and water vapor regulate the magnitude of the GHE.
So John how does one account for the energy that is absorbed by CO2 then re-emitted at a different temperature?
Since only GHG gases i.e. CO2 can absorb that particular energy, what happens to it? Yes one has to account for it in a thermodynamic equation yet the sad reality is that that energy is lost forever.
There is a lot of energy that is out there that is not used for anything yet it is there,
How does one account for it?
John West says, February 2, 2013 at 2:46 pm: “There still seems to be some lingering doubts about the greenhouse effect (GHE). The GHE is not new; it has been known about, measured, and accounted for in engineering calculations for decades. … In a wordy equation format:
[Net Energy Gain] = [Energy In] – [Energy Out] = [Solar (Short Wave) Energy Absorbed] – [Long Wave Energy Emitted] + [Long Wave “backradiation”] – [Evaporation] ± [Convection] ± [Conduction]”
==========================================================
John, let me guess for how many decades: ZERO? Because I never heard about that “back radiation warming” being proved experimentally.
To your equation, there are some problems there.
First, why would you cut out Solar Infra-red (long wave)?? As we know from the Wood’s experiment, he needed an extra glass pane to eliminate the effect of solar infra-red there: “When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 oC., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate. There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 oC.”. You can see, the solar IR was responsible for the 10C difference in temperature. Is it negligible to you? And the “greenhouse gases” do block some portion of the incoming solar IR, thus contributing to cooling. So,we have on the one hand cooling “greenhouse gases”. I just wonder, why we do not find any mention of it in the innumerable warmists’ explanations, neither in the IPCC reports nor in Wikipedia nor in other similar resources. It seems to be a dirty little secret to me, sorry.
Second, that thing about back radiation warming has apparently never been experimentally proven to work in the real world, although the hypothesis is 150 years old. On the other hand, the experiment by American professor of physics R.W.Wood dealt with the issue and demonstrated that the warming effect was either zero or negligible “even under the most favourable conditions” (http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html).
Does not look good for the AGW concept.
Box of Rocks says:
”So John how does one account for the energy that is absorbed by CO2 then re-emitted at a different temperature?”
Energy doesn’t have a temperature.
”Since only GHG gases i.e. CO2 can absorb that particular energy, what happens to it? Yes one has to account for it in a thermodynamic equation yet the sad reality is that that energy is lost forever.”
Once a CO2 molecule absorbs some energy that energy becomes vibration energy in the molecule (not translational therefore not affecting temperature within a gas), from there it could be emitted as IR or through a collision with another molecule become translational motion which is encompassed in the temperature measurement of a gas.
”There is a lot of energy that is out there that is not used for anything yet it is there,
How does one account for it?”
One accounts for it with the LAW of conservation of mass and energy.
Greg House says:
”John, let me guess for how many decades: ZERO?
Absolutely not zero. This is from memory because I don’t feel like crawling around my cold attic digging through boxes but way back in the 1980’s my “Heat Transfer, A Numerical Approach” had an equation for estimating radiant heat loss for a outside body at night that basically went [replacing engineering symbols for words]:
[Net Radiant Heat Loss] = [Stephan-Boltzmann Constant] X [Emissivity] X [Temperature(body)^4 – Temperature(sky)^4]
That Temperature(sky) is the apparent sky temperature being subtracted from the body’s temperature to account for “backradiation” or GHE in order to estimate the NET radiation instead of just the body’s emission based on its temperature alone. There are more accurate ways, like the link in my previous post shows, but this would do in most situations.
”First, why would you cut out Solar Infra-red (long wave)??”
You’re right there is significant IR in solar output, but solar spectrum peaks at a shorter wavelength and that’s pretty much what everyone identifies it by. I don’t think it really matters at night when there’s no solar UV or IR or anything in between.
CO2 absolutely can be a cooling agent (besides adsorbing solar IR), take a scenario where convection has heated some gas with CO2 in it, some of that energy could be imparted through collision to a CO2 molecule which them might emit that energy as IR resulting in net cooling of the mass of gas.
Experimentally, go outside at night and point an infrared thermometer at the darkest part of the sky you can find, the temperature read out will be the temperature proportional to the IR the instrument is picking up, i.e. apparent sky temperature.
Notice that while the GHE is real, it’s just one little part of the overall heat transfer scheme of things.
peterg on February 1, 2013 at 5:12 am
“For mine, 300 hundred watts/m2 long range radiation from the atmosphere raises the surface temperature by 30 degrees K, so an extra 2 watts isn’t going to do enough to be noticed outside the measurement noise.”
At 300w/sq m at the surface you’d think it would show up on a handheld ir thermometer when pointed at a clear sky. But it doesn’t detect anything, it reads under scale of less that -40F. It does however detect a short wave reflection of the Sun off the atm of max scale over +608F though.
I see my post ended up in a timely stop. I should have mentioned that the -40F reading was taken on a 35F day, and the thermometer read long wave ir from every surface it was pointed at. Including the bottom of clouds, except clear sky between where the Sun was, and the short wave reflection I mentioned.
Answer to Jens Bagh who said:
February 1, 2013 at 1:57 am
Please provide proof temperatures today are higher than during medieval period 900 -1200 BP.
I can prove that the temperature during 900-1200 BP was WARMER than today.
* ”Most of the Viking expansion took place during what scientist refer to as the dimatic optimum of the Medieval Warm Period dated ca, A.D. 800 to 1200 (Jones 1986: McGovern 1991); a general term for warm periods that reached chere optimum at different times across the North Atlantic (Groves and Switsur 1991). During this time the niean annual temperature for southem Greenland was 1 to 3°C higher than today.” Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site. Western Settlement. Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata), University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology Edmonton. Alberta Fa11 1997, page 40
* One of the most common pollens found during the excavation of the Garden of Sandet was Cyperaceae. First of all. The farm called ‘Garden under Sandet’ came into permafrost in mid 1300’s. It wasn’t until 1990 it was possible at all to excavate the farm in Greenland. Cyperaceae, as well as Shephard’s-purse Latin: Capsella bursa pastoris (Distribution: Capsella bursa pastoris and willow (latin: Salix caprea) distribution: Salix caprea distribution was found in layer from the early days of the farm. None of these could have been there hadn’t it been warmer in 900-1400 AD. In other words during the period you refer to 900-1200 BP.
* Other sources those who beliefs that today is warmer should have read had they been trustworthy:
McGovern Thomas H., Bones, Building and Boundaries: Palaeoeconomic Approaches to Norse Greenland. “Sandnes(W51) Hall 72 m², Byre 84 m² and Barn 155 m²; and Anavik(W7) Hall ?, Byre 50 m², Barn 54 m² and Storage 38 m²”. [McGovern, Table 6 Floor-area of selected structures of farms of the Eastern and Western Settlements, page 213.]
You might not know but 5000 people lived in Greenland in the warm peak (more than 2-3 degrees higher than today) The example above is from one of many of the farms. All in all farms in Greenland during the period up to 1341 were larger and they had more animals stallplaces on each farm than the ordinary Scandinavian and northern Europe farms had.
I can give you numerous example from real facts that prove the Climate alarmist as wrong as can be. Unfortunatly for them they don’t seem to have had access to any well educated Systemprogrammer who had studied Mathematical Statistic, (I am from 1971 as well I have studied the subject and many more). Had they had that, they would have known that it’s not possible to draw conclusions from none correct information. Corrected values aren’t correct! Mind you one can’t take the fact that the Alarmist scholars haven’t shown full knowledge of Computer Science limitations and programming as a proof of them not having a good systemprogrammer close by their side …. 🙂
”There is a lot of energy that is out there that is not used for anything yet it is there,
How does one account for it?”
One accounts for it with the LAW of conservation of mass and energy.
Well beyond the obvious, do you have a better answer?
Lew Skannen says:
February 1, 2013 at 2:42 am
No! Not complex at all. David Attenborough explains it.
“Basically the climate is modelled by a green line and a yellow line. The green line is the climate without human produced CO2 and that is a rather trivial model because all it requires is the input of volcanoes and the sun … and a few hundred other parameters available here.
( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/crowdsourced-climate-complexity-compiling-the-wuwt-potential-climatic-variables-reference-page/ )
You then add in the effect of CO2 to this simple model and you get the yellow line.
Simple.”
Yes, and he agrees with Paul Ehrlick that the global population MUST be significantly reduced..
Box of Rocks says:
”Well beyond the obvious, do you have a better answer?
The best accounting of Earth’s energy that I’ve seen:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/earth-energy-budget/stephens-earth-energy-balance-diag-crop.gif
It still leaves out several known energy conversions such as visible light to chemical energy (photosynthesis), which I would estimate at about 0.2 W/m2. So, if your point is that “climate science” hasn’t “accounted” for all the energy, then I’d have to agree, but that doesn’t mean the GHE is imaginary.
If there were no greenhouse effect it would not be sustainable for the surface to radiate 117% of SI to the atmosphere. Speaking of which, that 117% is SI is warming the water vapor and whatever few dioxides of Carbon from the bottom. I believe the models can be fixed but not by someone who thinks that warming the bottom of the atmosphere reduces the lapse rate. ” Adding long-wave absorbers, that is heat-trapping greenhouse gases, to the atmosphere decreases the usual temperature difference between the surface and the top of the atmosphere.”
Not scientists, attorneys.
MiCro says:
February 3, 2013 at 6:19 am
I did a bunch of reading last night at Dr Spencer’s blog, and the Long Wave IR is what’s warming the atm from the temp of Space to the -40F or so. Experiments in general measure the difference from surface temp to the sky temp as 10-20C depending on water vapor content. My reading was ~40C, but it was taken at near zero, so much of the water vapor was frozen out already. On a 12C day I saw a reading of ~ -35C, a 47C difference. My plan is to start logging IR temps, with surface temp and humidity on clear days.
You can see Black Body spectrum’s, and http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C124389&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1#IR-SPEC and http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C7732185&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=1#IR-SPEC spectrum’s to compare long wave radiation spectrums, and see the area that is of interest is 14-15um, but remember that one hour Solar .5u IR would take 20 hr’s to radiate out at 10u, and 30 hr’s at 15u.
But also note, that surface records shows no trend in the annual change in the difference between daily temperature increase and the night time drop in temps.
By Global difference by Latitude