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?
Steven Mosher says (March 2, 2013 at 6:23 am): [snip]
Looks like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the broomstick this morning. 🙂
Well, since “moderate volcanoes” have been active, for centuries and we even had some big messy volcanoes, also prior to 2000, what has changed? If Pinatubo (second most violent one since Krakatoa in the 19th Century) and others couldn’t hold Global warming back but for a year or so, how are these little guys doing it differently than before? Here is a graph of “optical depth as a measurement of aerosols from 1860 -2000:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-2-18.html
Note that very low activity does coincide with the 30s hot period but also coincides with the 40s to mid 60s very cold period. In the warming period 1980s to 2000 we have high aerosols which should have made this another cold period. Indeed record aerosols blocking during the period occurred. Anyone got the data for post 2000?
I have this: ” we take advantage of this well-calibrated set of measurements by applying a
newly-developed aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieval algorithm over land and ocean
to investigate the distribution of AOD, and to identify emerging patterns and trends
in global and regional aerosol loading during its 13-yr mission. Our results indicate
that the averaged AOD trend over global ocean is weakly positive from 1998 to 2010″
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/8465/2012/acpd-12-8465-2012.pdf
I’m sure I read, some time back, that thes same scientists were saying that the 20th and 21st centuries had been particularly quiet volcanically ??
Bob,
Because some articles are from 2011, could you please provide a quick and dirty time sequence for all of them?
Silver Ralph says:
March 2, 2013 at 9:56 am
“BTW, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has just run an item on the record snowfall in Japan. And the reason for all this snow? Yes, you’ve guessed it – Global Warming”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21625702
You can see the disarray in the hot community during this stressful period. The British Broadcorping Castration didn’t get the little volcanoes memo causing the snow and cold,.
Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 11:14 am
……..
Two significant rises in the North Atlantic SST (AMO) and the North Hemisphere temperature records took place in the mid 1920s and at the end of 1970s. There were two major climate unrelated events about same time:
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image018.jpg
Solar and geomagnetic changes combined produce strong correlation with the above temperature natural variability:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
No need for aerosols.
The irony of all this is: If we are going into global warming in lock-step with CO2 and aerosols are keeping us cool, then rather than expensive pie-in-the-sky geoengineering to spread aerosols to mitigate global warming,we can use cheap coal burning to do the same thing and get cheap electricity as a byproduct. Anyone? What’s wrong with this?
I’ve seen some other irony re volcanoes, suggesting that global warming is causing increased volcanic activity – how’s this for a beautiful negative feedback?
Are these guys getting desperate or what…??
they will try anything to promote man made global warming despite how silly and unscientific it is..
And the temperature rise from about 1910 to 1945? If anything, the aerosols from industrial pollution would have had a noticeable effect during that time and reduced the temps rather than have them increase at a comensurate rate to the ’80s and 90’s.
Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 9:05 am
to name a few show only the years with standstill, and not what was before
===================
we know what was “before” Martin……
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo3.png
And the clean air acts in the 60’s and 70’s led to a reduction in aerosols and some warming. “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
BarryW says:
March 2, 2013 at 12:29 pm
“And the temperature rise from about 1910 to 1945?”
Yep. Which, incidentally, is so precisely tuned that it is virtually an exact replica.
This sort of thing does not happen by chance. Whatever handwaving arguments people make that the increase in CO2 must have an effect, the data themselves show virtually none. Temperatures are repeating a pre-existing pattern with no evident divergence.
I am not arguing that the GHE does not exist. But, it is readily apparent that, under the current state of the system, the partial derivative of the function, i.e., sensitivity, of globally averaged temperature to CO2 is essentially nil.
I’m sick of excuses. I’d be hugely impressed if – just once – these warmists would stand up and say: “We got it wrong. We modelled it wrong.”
Shuffling papers and muttering excuses does not an adult make.
I say the whole issue is cognitive disonance caused by excessive amounts of moola,cash,money,governmental investment in research on global warming!
Obviously the theory of global warming itself can’t be wrong.
This is as stupid as the UK Met’s proposal for colding. ” It’s the melted arctic causing the winters to be cold but there is still global warming”. These people are just plain liars and con artists.
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld – Former United States Secretary of Defense – February 12, 2002
Why don’t you all just ignore Mr Mosher? You are giving him just what he wants.
“How long will political scientists continue to ignore the excellent correlation between global warming and cooling and ocean temperature changes, such as the PDO, AMO, ENSO, etc and attempt to ‘explain’ global warming and cooling on such flimsy scenarios?”
Answer: for as long as taxpayers keep funding the gravy train.
It’s official:
OH NOES !!! IT”S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!!
These scientists are going exactly what scientists are supposed to do: when results don’t agree with predictions, look around and figure out why not. Revise theory, test again.
I know everyone here wants CO2 not to be a satanic gas, but that’s very, very unlikely to happen. The radiative part of the calculation of climate sensitivity is among the best known parts of climate science, since it depends on quantum mechanics, which is known to be a very good theory.
The uncertainties lie in the *rest* of the calculation: aerosols, black soot, clouds, feedbacks, deep ocean dynamics. Except for the first two — which are negative feedbacks — there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.
AGW requires a warming in the tropical Troposphere but none detected by satellites and it is claimed that as many as 28 million weather balloons have also failed.
So whatever these comedians are up to it is linked to their own in built fantasies.
What is more the warmers like Mosher speak of “forcing” ……which I assume means positive feedback. Therefore one would like to know what negative feedback is in their play stations.
Phobos says:
“I know everyone here wants CO2 not to be a satanic gas, but that’s very, very unlikely to happen.”
There, in his own words: CO2 is a satanic gas.
Could Phobos be any less credible?
Phobos says:
March 2, 2013 at 2:30 pm
—————–
The satanic gas that causes plants to utilize water resources more efficiently and generally increases yields? That satanic gas?
I don’t have any issue with the radiative theory. It’s the application of the theory in this extremely complicated instance that makes thinks messy, with the feedbacks as you note if with nothing else.
Tell me, why are you so sold on the idea that the sign of the total feebacks is even positive?
Phobos…what you say is NOT what they are doing. They are not taking failed predictions as indicative of flaws in their hypothesis and change it…no, they are making excuses for a flawed hypothesis so as to pretend there is nothing wrong with it.
Unless you can control for all contingent variables you cannot know what the cause of the dependent variable is. You say its not a flaw in modelling the independent variable (CO2) but some contingent variable. Its quite literally impossible to make that assertion unless you establish controls for those contingent variables. Its simple. If x plus Y equals five and X or Y is three, EITHER x or y may equal 2 and you have no way of establishing which. What you are doing is guessing on an assumption.
This is basic undergraduate principles of science.