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?
(hosed my italics, reposting, please delete Mark Bofill March 3, 2013 at 1:40 pm)
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 12:54 pm
As for the evidence for AGW, there is always the trapped bubbles in the ice, showing the relationship between cO2 and temps for many millenia. The warming may have come first, due to planetary perturbations, etc, but the feedback relationship is clearly present. So the question remains. The science for the last 187 years has put forth co2 as a significant greenhouse gas. There is plenty of evidence for it. So I’m still waiting to hear what — if not co2 — is responsible for all the warming over the last 150 years.
———
Evan, help me out with this if you would and if you know; I’ve gone looking into this repeatedly and I’ve never found a satisfactory answer.
When you refer to the trapped bubbles in ice, and you realize that warming came first, and knowing that atmospheric CO2 increases are going to follow changes in temperature, can you explain to me how temperature increases due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 are supposed to look different from temperature increases due to some other agency? What’s the trick that allows us to uniquely attribute the paleo temperature increase to CO2?
See, if scientists today had an extremely precise notion of climate sensitivity, of what temperature increase to expect from a doubling of CO2, then I’d be willing to buy that as a method of attributing the warming in the past to the CO2. They could say, ‘hey, look at this data. CO2 doubled here, and temperature increased by X there.’ But scientists don’t appear to have the first darn clue, except to suggest a full 3C range of possibilities from 1.5 to 4.5C as likely. Heck, there are scientists can be found on both sides that think climate sensitivity is outside even that wide range. So, lacking that, exactly how does one go about demonstrating that a feedback relationship is clearly present in the paleo data?
This is an honest question and not necessarily an argument, and I’d be delighted to learn something today if anyone has a decent answer. I don’t even care if you don’t think the answer is correct at the end of the day in fact, I’d still love to hear whatever the justification for this thinking is supposed to be.
BTW – you can put me in the ‘don’t know what’s causing the warming’ category. Lack of another explanation isn’t a persuasive argument for CO2 in my book.
Evan Bedford says:
“Why don’t you publish it, overturn the paradigm and win a Nobel Prize?”
As you can see, it has already been published. I am just opening your eyes.
And:
“I don’t see any reason for complacency.”
Translation: “But what if…!” That is emotion, not science.
Evan Bedford, I would like to explain some basic scientific facts. If you have an open mind, they will alter your world view. If not, then you have a religion, and nothing will change your beliefs.
You say, “I’m still waiting to hear what — if not co2 — is responsible for all the warming over the last 150 years.” That is the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: ‘Since I can’t think of anything else, then CO2 must be the reason!’ Let me walk you through the situation:
First, something unknown forced the planet into one of the coldest episodes of the entire 10,700 year Holocene: the Little Ice Age [LIA]. Since then, the planet has been recovering — naturally — from that anomaly. CO2 had nothing to do with the natural recovery. How do we know that?
We know that CO2 had nothing to do with the warming because the rising temperature trend has remained at about 0.35ºC per century, whether CO2 was low, or high. If CO2 had any effect, then global warming would be rapidly accelerating. It isn’t.
In fact, the long term rising temperature trend has ben decelerating [the green trend line]. And global warming has stalled over the past decade or more. If CO2 had the claimed effect, global temperatures would be accelerating. But they are not.
The mistaken belief is that changes in CO2 cause changes in temperature. That is wrong. In fact, ∆T causes ∆CO2. That chart clearly shows the true cause and effect, and it holds not only on yearly time scales, but on time scales of hundreds of millennia. Are you following the logic so far?
Let’s recap:
1. There are no scientific measurements showing that rises in CO2 cause rises in temperature. None at all. The only empirical measurements show that changes in temperature cause changes in CO2; not vice-versa.
2. The long term global warming trend has remained within tight parameters for hundreds of years, regardless of atmospheric CO2 levels. CO2 simply does not matter to any measurable degree. AGW may exist, but if so it is such a minuscule effect that it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
3. ∆T causes ∆CO2, not vice-versa. There is no real world data showing that CO2 causes global warming. That remains a conjecture. The only empirical evidence available shows that changes in CO2 are caused by changes in temperature.
When someone writes in the manner that you do, it is clear that these scientific facts cause cognitive dissonance, and they will be rejected. Belief systems are notoriously difficult to overcome. I trust that other readers will look at the scientific evidence, and decide based on that.
The biosphere is starved of CO2. We need more, not less. And even arch-alarmist Phil Jones agrees that previous rises in global warming have had identical slopes, indicating that CO2 has had no effect.
You can sink back into your comfortable belief system, or you can accept the mountains of evidence proving that CO2 has little effect on temperature. The choice is yours.
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 12:54 pm
As for the evidence for AGW, there is always the trapped bubbles in the ice, showing the relationship between cO2 and temps for many millenia. The warming may have come first, due to planetary perturbations, etc, but the feedback relationship is clearly present.
Evan, as you know, the relationship is that temperature changes caused CO2 changes over some 800 kyears, with a lag of several hundreds of years during glacial-interglacial transitions and several thousands of years in the opposite direction.
The problem is that there is a huge overlap of temperature and CO2 changes during most transitions, which makes it impossible to know if there is a feedback of CO2 on temperature. With one exception: the end of the previous interglacial, the Eemian, where temperatures were already back at a minimum (and ice sheets at a maximum), before CO2 levels started to drop.
The drop of 40 ppmv CO2 over a period of some 5000 years had no measurable effect on temperature or ice sheet formation. Thus if there is a feedback from CO2 on temperature, it is very modest… See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
Hi Mark. I just looked up paleoclimate, co2, temperature, and correlation on google and found these:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
I’m guessing that the graphs would demonstrate a fairly good correlation between temps and co2. As for some other agency being the cause, I would guess that even though planetary perturbation is the initial trigger, its continuing behaviour wouldn’t look anything like the graphs at all (in other words, it triggers the feedback event, but the feedback event then outruns it, so it doesn’t continue to contribute to it in a signficant way).
The word “mainly” has been used regarding co2. I.e. Co2 is now the ‘main’ driver of climate. James Hansen said that the ‘main’ driver of the warming up to 2000 was not Co2. Now, you either accept it was or it was not. If you don’t it’s not my problem it’s between you and Dr. James Hansen.
Wamron says:
March 3, 2013 at 1:04 pm
And
Mark Bofill says:
March 3, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Wamron: This does not establish causality vs. correlation, to which Bofill alludes. This is the problem with the very indirect applied sciences, especially when this science in particular has more variables than equations, an insoluble conundrum. One thing is sure: without the establishment of causality, no solution to the problem can be forthcoming. Anything we try could have no effect or make things worse, especially economically.
Mark: Scripps has shown that CO2 migrates in ice, and established that rate constant. All gases migrate through solids; however Scripps showed a couple of years ago that this diffusion, albeit slow, is important over geologic time frames. CO2 diffuses under the restraints of Fick’s Laws of Diffusion. The rate is directly proportional to the initial concentration. Looking at the ice sheet as a membrane, albeit large, diffusion goes from the region of high concentration to low concentration (outside the ice). So if the concentration in the bubble is 10 times the concentration outside, then diffusion will be 10 times faster. If the concentration inside is the same as outside, then net diffusion ceases. The concentration in the bubble will always “seek” the outside concentration, if it is lower inside.
This means that, in the past, if the CO2 concentration were appreciably higher (like I figure it must have been to support huge beasties—high CO2 means the high plant growth necessary to feed the appetites of the beasts—high plant growth means higher O2 concentration, which leads to ability to deliver O2 to more distal organs to support huge animals, etc.), then it would not be measured as high today.
The diffusion would have, over long times, depleted the bubbles of previousy high CO2 concentration that ice core scientists now assume is and was a “lock box”. It is not.
Where is your “plenty of evidence for it.”? Do you know about the Little Ice Age? Once it was over, what did you expect? What was responsible for all the cooling the Little Ice Age? What caused it to end? I am waiting for your answers.
Please note my earlier points about WHO should provide evidence. It is for those who make claims about warming over natural variability,. It is not for sceptics to provide a damned thing whether you like it or not. I await your answers to my question.
Evan Bedford,
HYPOTHETICAL:
I recently submitted a paper for peer review stating that the cause of recent global warming was the Sun. It was rejected due to an error. I asked the peer reveiwers if they could think of anything else if ti wasn’t the Sun wot done it? They laughed at me.
This is what you are asking me to do. The models are flawed and you ask me to give you a reason for the rise in temperature over the last 150 years. Can you see that you have lost the plot?????? This is not the way science is done for goodness sake.
Evan Bedford,
Please show me the evidence that co2 is responsible for most of the warming of the past 150 years. BUT first note that the IPCC, to the best of my recollection, says that man’s co2 only had a discernable effect on global mean temps after around 1960. The IPCC acknowledges that some of the rise in natural.
D B Stealey says:
“∆T causes ∆CO2, not vice-versa.”
I’ve seen vice-versa in a university lab: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot5n9m4whaw
Jimbo says:
“Where is your “plenty of evidence for it.”? Do you know about the Little Ice Age? Once it was over, what did you expect? What was responsible for all the cooling the Little Ice Age? What caused it to end? I am waiting for your answers.”
I would think that the LIA would more properly be seen as a phenomenon rather than a mechanism.
Jimbo says:
“Please show me the evidence that co2 is responsible for most of the warming of the past 150 years. BUT first note that the IPCC, to the best of my recollection, says that man’s co2 only had a discernable effect on global mean temps after around 1960. The IPCC acknowledges that some of the rise in natural.”
Sounds intriguing. Do you have a link?
Evan Bedford,
I can think of several reasons that is not comparable. For one: you are trying to equate pure CO2 with 0.00039 CO2. Not even in the same state, much less the same ball park. But nice try, and thanx for playing.
If you want credibility, produce a chart showing cause and effect, where ∆CO2 causes ∆T. Surely with the $100 billion+ spent on proving AGW over the past decade, there is at least one such chart, no?
No.
Evan Bedford,
I have found the correlation you were looking for between co2 and temperature. You were correct after all and I was totally wrong. Please accept my humblest and most sincere apology. I will never again utter a word of doubt when you make your stone clad claims. So sorry.
/ SARC
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html
You should have been a boxer. Ducking and diving, ducking and weaving. What caused LIA to start and what caused LIA to end?
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Hi Mark. I just looked up paleoclimate, co2, temperature, and correlation on google and found these:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
I’m guessing that the graphs would demonstrate a fairly good correlation between temps and co2. As for some other agency being the cause, I would guess that even though planetary perturbation is the initial trigger, its continuing behaviour wouldn’t look anything like the graphs at all (in other words, it triggers the feedback event, but the feedback event then outruns it, so it doesn’t continue to contribute to it in a signficant way).
————-
Thanks so much for your reply, I appreciate it. I’ll look at it carefully.
Evan Bedford;
I would think that the LIA would more properly be seen as a phenomenon rather than a mechanism.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Phenomenal!
Now that we have that settled, what was the mechanism that caused the phenomenon?
bubbagyro says:
March 3, 2013 at 2:40 pm
—————–
Thanks, will read Scripps.
This looks like a pretty good fit to me. What else is there?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/every:60/scale:1/offset:-325/plot/best/from:1960/to:2011/scale:60
From Evan Bedford’s link:
Changes in temperature precede changes in CO2, with a lag of around 800 years.
That is what I have been saying. On all time scales temperature leads CO2. In fact, I linked to that same chart upthread. ∆T causes ∆CO2. There are plenty of other sources showing that relationship.
Still waiting for a chart that shows ∆CO2 causes ∆T. Surely there must be at least one, no?
.
.
.
No.
.
Now, about your “pretty good fit”: that is a simple overlay. It does not show cause and effect like the chart I posted. Fact the fact that ∆T causes ∆CO2.
Jimbo says:
“What caused LIA to start and what caused LIA to end?”
Obviously a mechanism of some sort. Wikipedia lists 6 possible candidates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
DB Stealey says:
“I can think of several reasons that is not comparable. For one: you are trying to equate pure CO2 with 0.00039 CO2. Not even in the same state, much less the same ball park. But nice try, and thanx for playing.”
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:15 pm
This looks like a pretty good fit to me. What else is there?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/every:60/scale:1/offset:-325/plot/best/from:1960/to:2011/scale:60
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Wow! Nice cherry pick!
Now let’s do it again but with the whole globe instead of the 30% you limited it to, and let’s extend it to 2012, nothing like having the most data possible, and let’s throw in the latest from HadCrut and RSS and see how it looks. Ooops.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/every:60/scale:1/offset:-325/plot/best/from:1960/to:2012/scale:60/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/to:2012/scale:60/plot/rss/from:1960/to:2012/scale:60
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. You can’t produce any actual evidence so you produce a rather primitive attempt at misdirection instead. That tells anyone who is objective that you have no real evidence to present. What it should tell YOU is that you are fooling no one but yourself. You should listen.
The ones I showed you above your post. They show a very bad fit. Try again.
Correlation is not necessarily causation. I have grown older in the last 45 years and so have the trees in my garden. What bollocks!
bubbagyro says:
March 3, 2013 at 2:40 pm
Mark: Scripps has shown that CO2 migrates in ice, and established that rate constant.
The diffusion, based on measurements of remelt layers in the Siple Dome ice core shows a small migration at medium depth, which broadens the resolution from 20 to 22 years at 2.74 kyr age and from 20 to 40 years at 70 kyr age. Hardly a problem. Thus the migration over 70 kyrs only affects a few meters of ice, far from reaching the surface a few hundreds to thousands of meters above it.
Further, that is only in relative “warm”, coastal ice cores, but the migration is much lower in the far colder high altitude inland ice cores like Vostok and Dome C. If there was substantial migration, that would lead to a further smoothing of the highest levels of the interglacials (10% of the time periods), thus a reduction of the CO2/temperature ratio (at about 8 ppmv/degr.C) for each 100 kyr step back in time. But that is not observed.
You correctly say that CO2 migrates from high to low levels. Thus if you find low levels of CO2 in ice cores for some periods, either there was little or no migration, or the outside CO2 levels even were (much) lower, not higher.