While looking for quotes on an upcoming post about Ocean Heat Content, I ran across the press release for a new paper (in press) by Neely et al, which blames the recent slowdown in global warming on smaller more moderate volcanos.
ADD ANOTHER REASON TO THE NON-CONSENSUS
Many readers will recall the October 2011 article by Paul Voosen titled Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming. The article presented the different responses from a number of climate scientists, including John Barnes, Kevin Trenberth, Susan Solomon, Jean-Paul Vernier, Ben Santer, John Daniel, Judith Lean, James Hansen, Martin Wild, and Graeme Stephens, to the question, “Why, despite steadily accumulating greenhouse gases, did the rise of the planet’s temperature stall for the past decade?” The different replies led Roger Pielke, Sr. to note at the end of his post Candid Comments from Climate Scientists:
These extracts from the Greenwire article illustrate why the climate system is not yet well understood. The science is NOT solved.
Judith Curry provided running commentary in her post Candid Comments from Global Warming Scientists. If you haven’t read it, it’s a worthwhile read.
NEW STUDY BY NEELY ET AL PRESENTS ANOTHER REASON
Neely et al 2013 (in press) blames moderate volcanos. According to a press release from the University of Colorado Boulder:
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight — dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.
The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his CU-Boulder doctoral thesis. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet.
The paper (in press) is Neely et al (2013) Recent anthropogenic increases in SO2 from Asia have minimal impact on stratospheric aerosol.
The abstract reads:
Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000, which is significant for Earth’s climate. Contributions to this increase both from moderate volcanic eruptions and from enhanced coal burning in Asia have been suggested. Current observations are insufficient to attribute the contribution of the different sources. Here we use a global climate model coupled to an aerosol microphysical model to partition the contribution of each. We employ model runs that include the increases in anthropogenic sulfur dioxide (SO2) over Asia and the moderate volcanic explosive injections of SO2 observed from 2000 to 2010. Comparison of the model results to observations reveals that moderate volcanic eruptions, rather than anthropogenic influences, are the primary source of the observed increases in stratospheric aerosol.
Bottom line: There’s still no consensus from climate scientists about the cause of the slowdown in the warming rate of global surface temperatures.
And of course, the sea surface temperature and ocean heat content reveal another reason: there hadn’t been a strong El Niño to release monumental volumes of warm water from below the surface of the tropical Pacific and shift up the sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific Oceans. Refer to my essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” and my ebook Who Turned on the Heat?
Evan Bedford says:
“And why is it not in the same state?”
Please tell me you’re kidding. You can’t be that dense.
Evan Bedford;
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From someone who claimed up thread that they understood calculus comes this rather obvious evidence that they do not.
I am so happy you point to no less than SIX POSSIBLE CANDIDATES, yet you hint at only ONE for your recent temperature rise culprit. SIX CANDIDATES is not an answer to my question. You have failed. Try again.
Evan Bedford,
If you can give me a definitive pointer for the recent warming, then why not give me a definitive pointer to the cause of the Little Ice Age? Also a cause for its end in the 19th century? History and paleo is a pain in your asssss.
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
The mechanism remains the same, regardless of concentration, but the real atmosphere is not 100% CO2. It contains e.g. water which is a more important GHG than CO2 and already saturates several CO2 absorption bands. Further, any increase in temperature may be mitigated by clouds and poleward transport of air and water… Thus by far not comparable with an effect measured in an experiment on lab scale…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:40 pm
You are right about that. I was thinking GYrs, not KYrs. CO2 was pretty much constant over the last KYrs, and the Vostok cores are only good for KYrs. The dinosaurs were not around thousands of years ago. We have only indirect methods (proxies) to calculate CO2 millions of years ago.
Evan Bedford;
Obviously a mechanism of some sort. Wikipedia lists 6 possible candidates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Just six possible ones huh? So you’re admitting you don’t know?
BTW, the very first graph in the article you link to shows something rather interesting. About 600 years of warming prior to the LIA, then 600 years of cooling, and then 400 years (to present) of warming. So what you are saying is you don’t know why it was warming for 600 years (don’t blame CO2, the industrial revolution didn’t start for centuries after that), you don’t know why it was cooling foir the next 600 years, you don’t know why it started warming after that for 400 years, but you are absolutely certain that the warming of the last 50 of that 1600 years is from CO2….and you want to just ignore that the warming of the last 17 years has been zero despite the highest co2 levels ever.
Do you actually look at your own evidence before you present it?
Evan Bedford,
You might not care about my opinion, but there are few people anywhere who know more about CO2 transport and effect than Ferdinand Engelbeen.
D.B. Stealey / March 3, 2013 at 6:54 am
van Etten says: “first answer my other questions”
No.
ok with me, you can’t, you won’t, you do whatever what…
science is also a discourse, if you don’t participate by answering to questions, well than the discourse is finished;
Martin van Etten,
See vukcevic’s comment of March 3, 2013 at 11:53 am
And I’m not playing your ‘questions’ game. Why? Because you have yet to give a straight answer to anyone’s questions. Your mind is made up and closed air-tight. The only reason I reply to your comments is to correct the misinformation you’re always emitting. Some readers might think you’re giving accurate information, when you’re not.
All,
Martin van Etten is the troll who, in another thread, posted a sickening video of a pig being suffocated to death in a gas chamber filled with 100% CO2. He then tried to represent this as being relevant to the climate debate.
No further discussion with this sicko is warranted IMHO.
MARTIN VAN ETTEN
You have posted since I have last, ergo you have had achance to consider my offer.
Are you a gentleman?
(Ok, thats a rhetorical qiuestion)
Will you accept my offer like a civilised man.
You say where and when and we will settle this.
Otherwise an admission and an apology will; be sufficient.
Evan Bedford,
I am waiting for you answer. What caused LIA to start? What caused LIA to end in the 19th century?
These are simple questions since you talk about temperature rise over 150 years corresponding with co2 rise. Why the wait?
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:15 pm
“This looks like a pretty good fit to me. What else is there?”
It’s an awful fit. You have denuded the time series of any discernible information besides a slowly accelerating quadratic function. The resemblance is entirely superficial.
This is the real relationship. It matches across the entire frequency spectrum, both the long term trend, and the short term variation. It integrates readily and with high fidelity into the observed CO2 concentration.
Since the level of CO2 is the integral of the rate of change, the relationship shows that CO2 necessarily lags temperature, which means that the only possible significant causal relationship is temperature to CO2, and not the reverse. Furthermore, because of the uniqueness of solutions to differential equations, there is no room in the relationship for a significant human contribution. It would introduce excess curvature in the integrated output or, if the temperature relationship were deweighted to make room for it, we would no longer match the variation in the derivative. It necessarily follows that human inputs are a small portion of total flows, and are quickly sequestered, producing no significant effect on overall levels.
Ferdinand Ebglebeen;
The mechanism remains the same, regardless of concentration,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well I suppose that is technically accurate. But in the context of this discussion, I don’t think it accurately represents the physics. The effect of co2 increases is logarithmic. So, increasing CO2 from 400 ppm to 800 ppm has an effect that we can guestimate is significant, in the range of +1 degree. But increasing CO2 from 999,000 ppm to 999,400 would have an effect that we can roughly guestimate (rounding off to 9 decimal places) as… zero.
So, from my perspective, D B Stealey was quite correct that theorizing an earth atmosphere approaching 100% co2 just isn’t applicable to the discussion. In fact, anything over 800 ppm is pretty much inconsequential based on the warming that would in theory occur versus the amount of fossil fuel we’d have to burn to get there. 800 ppm gets us in theory +1 from where we are now, 1600 only gets us in theory +2. We’re only going up what, 2 to 3 ppm per year? That’s +2 degrees in 400 to 600 YEARS? And that is without considering that the +2 would not be evenly distributed, very little would show up in the tropics or at summer highs, the bulk of it would show up at high latitude winter lows.
davidmhoffer says:
March 3, 2013 at 5:47 pm (replying to)
Ferdinand Ebglebeen;
I would argue equally firmly that trying to play a “what if there were no CO2 at all?” game is equally foolish but very, very usefully distractive.
We KNOW absolutely that life begins to die (plants cannot live successfully as we know them today) at CO2 levels much under 200 ppm.
Thus, arguing about temperatures with no CO2 is irrelevant: There has been no period in the world’s history since plants began producing oxygen from CO2 3.5 billion years ago that CO2 levels have been less than 200, and thus, trying to claim a temperature of less than zero with no CO2 tells us nothing about today’s real world.
The “logic” however in making a such a claim is that “if a little CO2 produces some warming, then a lot of CO2 must produce a lot of warming.”
Which is, admittedly, a very seductive logic if nothing else is known. And nothing else is wanted to be learned.
DavidMHoffer says:
“It is blatant attempts at cherry picking and misrepresenting the data, like your obvious see through attempt to do so here, that was one of the first clues that brought me into the skeptic camp.”
Sorry, that was my unfamiliarity with the site. No attempts at cherry-picking.
DB Stealey says:
“Please tell me you’re kidding. You can’t be that dense.”
I guess I am that dense. Please walk me through it.
Jimbo says:
“Evan Bedford,
If you can give me a definitive pointer for the recent warming, then why not give me a definitive pointer to the cause of the Little Ice Age? Also a cause for its end in the 19th century? History and paleo is a pain in your asssss.”
There weren’t any thermometers in the LIA. Also no observatory on Mauna Loa. Also a lot of other things. That’s why scientists postulated a lot of different causes.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:56 pm
“Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
The mechanism remains the same, regardless of concentration, but the real atmosphere is not 100% CO2. It contains e.g. water which is a more important GHG than CO2 and already saturates several CO2 absorption bands. Further, any increase in temperature may be mitigated by clouds and poleward transport of air and water… Thus by far not comparable with an effect measured in an experiment on lab scale…”
The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.
davidmhoffer says:
March 3, 2013 at 4:00 pm
“Evan Bedford;
Obviously a mechanism of some sort. Wikipedia lists 6 possible candidates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Just six possible ones huh? So you’re admitting you don’t know?”
Yup. You got it. I’m not omniscient. (But Ruddiman’s speculation is very interesting).
Bedford says:
“The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.”
Could you be any more insufferable? Dr Engelbeen has forgotten more about this subject than you will ever learn.
Evan Bedford;
Sorry, that was my unfamiliarity with the site. No attempts at cherry-picking.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But no admission that the correlation you insisted was there, isn’t,
Evan Bedford;
The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But the effect is logarithmic. And the cooling response at surface is exponential.
But someone with the math skills you claim would understand those implications, would you not?
davidmhoffer says:
March 3, 2013 at 6:59 pm
“Evan Bedford;
The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But the effect is logarithmic. And the cooling response at surface is exponential.
But someone with the math skills you claim would understand those implications, would you not?”
I understand that higher and higher concentrations of co2 have less and less effect on temperature. But the mechanism is there. If it wasn’t, then Arrhenius would have a slightly shorter entry in wikipedia.