From CO2Science:
Medieval Warm Period (Antarctica) — Summary
Was there a Medieval Warm Period somewhere in the world in addition to the area surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean, where its occurrence is uncontested? This question is of utmost importance to the ongoing global warming debate, for if the Medieval Warm Period is found to have been a global climatic phenomenon, and if the locations where it occurred were as warm in medieval times as they are currently, there is no need to consider the temperature increase of the past century as anything other than the natural progression of the persistent millennial-scale oscillation of climate that regularly brings the earth several-hundred-year periods of modestly higher and lower temperatures that are totally independent of variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Consequently, we here review the findings of several studies that have found evidence for the Medieval Warm Period in a region that is as far away from lands bordering on the North Atlantic Ocean as one could possibly get, i.e., Antarctica.
Hemer and Harris (2003) extracted a sediment core from beneath the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, at a point that is currently about 80 km landward of the location of its present edge. In analyzing the core’s characteristics over the past 5,700 14C years, the two scientists observed a peak in absolute diatom abundance in general, and the abundance of Fragilariopsis curta in particular-which parameters, in their words, “are associated with increased proximity to an area of primary production, such as the sea-ice zone”-at about 750 14C yr B.P., which puts the time of maximum Ice Shelf retreat in close proximity to the historical time frame of the Medieval Warm Period.
Khim et al. (2002) likewise analyzed a sediment core removed from the eastern Bransfield Basin just off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, including grain size, total organic carbon content, magnetic susceptibility, biogenic silica content, 210Pb geochronology, and radiocarbon (14C) age, all of which data clearly depicted, in their words, the presence of the “Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm period, together with preceding climatic events of similar intensity and duration.”
Working in the same general region of the continent, Hall et al. (2010) write that “over the past 50 years, the Antarctic Peninsula warmed ~2°C,” and that resultant rapid ice breakups “have destroyed several small, thin ice shelves fringing the Antarctic Peninsula (i.e., Cook and Vaughan, 2009, and references therein),” leading them to ask, “is the recent warming of the Antarctic Peninsula unique in the Holocene?”
In an effort to place the current ice recession in a broader context, the three researchers “examined organic-rich sediments exposed by the recent retreat of the Marr Ice Piedmont on western Anvers Island near Norsel Point,” where glaciers “have been undergoing considerable retreat in response to the well-documented warming.” There, they “obtained moss and reworked marine shells from natural sections within 26 meters of the present ice front,” as well as “both peat and reworked shells from sediments exposed in a tunnel beneath the residual ice mass,” samples of which were radiocarbon-dated and the results converted to calendar years.
The results they obtained by these means indicated peat from the overrun sediments dated to between 707 ± 36 and 967 ± 47 cal. yr B.P.,” which led them to conclude, “ice was at or behind its present position at ca. 700-970 cal. yr B.P. and during at least two earlier times, represented by the dates of shells, in the mid-to-late Holocene.” Then, in language pure and simple, the three researchers say their findings imply that “the present state of reduced ice on the western Antarctic Peninsula is not unprecedented.” This leads them to pose another important question: “How widespread is the event at 700-970 cal. yr B.P.?”
In answering their own query, the researchers respond that (1) “Khim et al. (2002) noted a pronounced high-productivity (warm) event between 500 and 1000 cal. yr B.P. in magnetic susceptibility records from Bransfield Basin,” (2) “dates of moss adjacent to the present ice front in the South Shetland Islands (Hall, 2007) indicate that ice there was no more extensive between ca. 650 and 825 cal. yr B.P. than it is now,” (3) “evidence for reduced ice extent at 700-970 cal. yr B.P. is consistent with tree-ring data from New Zealand that show a pronounced peak in summer temperatures (Cook et al., 2002),” (4) “New Zealand glaciers were retracted at the same time (Schaefer et al., 2009),” and (5) their most recent findings “are compatible with a record of glacier fluctuations from southern South America, the continental landmass closest to Antarctica (Strelin et al., 2008).” In light of these several observations, therefore, it would appear that much of the southernmost portion of the Earth likely experienced a period of significantly enhanced warmth within the broad timeframe of the planet’s global MWP. And this interval of warmth occurred when there was far less CO2 and methane in the atmosphere than there is today.
In one additional study from the Antarctic Peninsula, Lu et al. (2012) constructed “the first downcore δ18O record of natural ikaite hydration waters and crystals collected from the Antarctic Peninsula (AP)” that they say were “suitable for reconstructing a low resolution ikaite record of the last 2000 years.” According to the group of nine UK and US researchers, ikaite “is a low temperature polymorph of calcium carbonate that is hydrated with water molecules contained in its crystal lattice,” and they write that “ikaite crystals from marine sediments, if collected and maintained at low temperatures, preserve hydration waters and their intact crystal structures, both of which have the potential to provide isotopic constraints on past climate change.” So what did they find?
The authors report that “the ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.” They also state that the “most recent crystals suggest a warming relative to the LIA in the last century, possibly as part of the regional recent rapid warming,” but they add that “this climatic signature is not yet as extreme in nature as the MWP,” suggesting that even the dramatic recent warming of the AP may not yet have returned that region to the degree of warmth that was experienced there during the MWP, when the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration was more than 100 ppm less than it is today.
Examining a different region of the continent, Hall and Denton (2002) mapped the distribution and elevation of surficial deposits along the southern Scott Coast of Antarctica in the vicinity of the Wilson Piedmont Glacier, which runs parallel to the coast of the western Ross Sea from McMurdo Sound north to Granite Harbor. The chronology of the raised beaches they studied was determined from more than 60 14C dates of incorporated organic materials they had previously collected from hand-dug excavations (Hall and Denton, 1999); the record the dates helped define demonstrated that near the end of the Medieval Warm Period, “as late as 890 14C yr BP,” as Hall and Denton describe it, “the Wilson Piedmont Glacier was still less extensive than it is now,” demonstrating that the climate of that period was in all likelihood considerably warmer than it is currently.
Several years later, but also working in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica, Bertler et al. (2011) obtained new deuterium (δD) data acquired via analysis of the top fifty meters of a 180-meter-long ice core that had been extracted from the ice divide of Victoria Lower Glacier in the northernmost McMurdo Dry Valleys, which they converted to temperature data by means of a temperature-isotope relationship developed by Steig et al. (1998) from data obtained from the Taylor Dome ice core record. In doing so, Bertler et al. report that they identified three distinct time periods in their record: the last 150 years of the Medieval Warm Period (AD 1140 to 1287), the Little Ice Age (AD 1288 to 1807), and the Modern Era (AD 1808 to 2000). And with respect to the Medieval Warm Period, they write that “the McMurdo Dry Valleys were 0.35°C warmer during the MWP than during ME, accompanied by warmer conditions in the Ross Sea.” The three researchers also note that “a magnetic susceptibility record from Palmer Deep marine core (PD92 30MS) also supports warmer MWP conditions, this time in Drake Passage (Domack and Mayewski, 1999).”
Noon et al. (2003) used oxygen isotopes preserved in authigenic carbonate retrieved from freshwater sediments of Sombre Lake on Signy Island (60°43’S, 45°38’W) in the Southern Ocean to construct a 7,000-year history of that region’s climate. This work revealed that the general trend of temperature at the study site has been downward. Of most interest to the present discussion, however, is the millennial-scale oscillation of climate that is apparent in much of the record. This climate cycle is such that approximately 2,000 years ago, after a thousand-year gap in the data, Signy Island experienced the relative warmth of the last vestiges of the Roman Warm Period, as delineated by McDermott et al. (2001) on the basis of a high-resolution speleothem δ18O record from southwest Ireland. Then comes the Dark Ages Cold period, which is also contemporaneous with what McDermott et al. observe in the Northern Hemisphere, after which the Medieval Warm Period appears at the same point in time and persists for the same length of time that it does in the vicinity of Ireland, whereupon the Little Ice Age sets in just as it does in the Northern Hemisphere. Finally, there is an indication of late twentieth century warming, but with still a long way to go before conditions comparable to those of the Medieval Warm Period are achieved.
Two years later, Castellano et al. (2005) derived a detailed history of Holocene volcanism from the sulfate record of the first 360 meters of the Dome Concordia ice core that covered the period 0-11.5 kyr BP, after which they compared their results for the past millennium with similar results obtained from eight other Antarctic ice cores. Before doing so, however, they normalized the results at each site by dividing their several volcanic-induced sulfate deposition values by the value produced at that site by the AD 1816 Tambora eruption, in order to reduce deposition differences among sites that might have been induced by differences in local site characteristics. This work revealed that most volcanic events in the early last millennium (AD 1000-1500) exhibited greater among-site variability in normalized sulphate deposition than was observed thereafter.
Citing Budner and Cole-Dai (2003) in noting that “the Antarctic polar vortex is involved in the distribution of stratospheric volcanic aerosols over the continent,” Castellano et al. say that assuming the intensity and persistence of the polar vortex in both the troposphere and stratosphere “affect the penetration of air masses to inland Antarctica, isolating the continental area during cold periods and facilitating the advection of peripheral air masses during warm periods (Krinner and Genthon, 1998), we support the hypothesis that the pattern of volcanic deposition intensity and geographical variability [higher values at coastal sites] could reflect a warmer climate of Antarctica in the early last millennium,” and that “the re-establishment of colder conditions, starting in about AD 1500, reduced the variability of volcanic depositions.”
Describing this phenomenon in terms of what it implies, Castellano et al. say “this warm/cold step could be like a Medieval Climate Optimum-like to Little Ice Age-like transition.” They additionally cite Goosse et al. (2004) as reporting evidence from Antarctic ice-core δD and δ18O data “in support of a Medieval Warming-like period in the Southern Hemisphere, delayed by about 150 years with respect to Northern Hemisphere Medieval Warming.” And the researchers conclude by postulating that “changes in the extent and intra-Antarctic variability of volcanic depositional fluxes may have been consequences of the establishment of a Medieval Warming-like period that lasted until about AD 1500.”
A year later, Hall et al. (2006) collected skin and hair (and even some whole-body mummified remains) from Holocene raised-beach excavations at various locations along Antarctica’s Victoria Land Coast, which they identified by both visual inspection and DNA analysis as coming from southern elephant seals, and which they analyzed for age by radiocarbon dating. By these means they obtained data from 14 different locations within their study region-which they describe as being “well south” of the seals’ current “core sub-Antarctic breeding and molting grounds”-that indicate that the period of time they denominate the Seal Optimum began about 600 BC and ended about AD1400, the latter of which dates they describe as being “broadly contemporaneous with the onset of Little Ice Age climatic conditions in the Northern Hemisphere and with glacier advance near [Victoria Land’s] Terra Nova Bay.”
In describing the significance of their findings, the US, British, and Italian researchers say they are indicative of “warmer-than-present climate conditions” at the times and locations of the identified presence of the southern elephant seal, and that “if, as proposed in the literature, the [Ross] ice shelf survived this period, it would have been exposed to environments substantially warmer than present,” which would have included both the Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm Period.
Advancing one year closer to the present, Williams et al. (2007) presented methyl chloride (CH3Cl) measurements of air extracted from a 300-m ice core that was obtained at the South Pole, Antarctica, covering the time period 160 BC to AD 1860. In describing what they found, the researchers say “CH3Cl levels were elevated from 900-1300 AD by about 50 ppt relative to the previous 1000 years, coincident with the warm Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA),” and that they “decreased to a minimum during the Little Ice Age cooling (1650-1800 AD), before rising again to the modern atmospheric level of 550 ppt.” Noting that “today, more than 90% of the CH3Cl sources and the majority of CH3Cl sinks lie between 30°N and 30°S (Khalil and Rasmussen, 1999; Yoshida et al., 2004),” they say “it is likely that climate-controlled variability in CH3Cl reflects changes in tropical and subtropical conditions.” They go on to say that “ice core CH3Cl variability over the last two millennia suggests a positive relationship between atmospheric CH3Cl and global [italics added] mean temperature.”
As best as can be determined from the graphical representation of their data, the peak CH3Cl concentration measured by Williams et al. during the MCA is approximately 533 ppt, which is within 3 percent of its current mean value of 550 ppt and well within the range of 520 to 580 ppt that characterizes methyl chloride’s current variability. It may therefore be validly concluded that the mean peak temperature of the MCA (which is herein referred to as the Medieval Warm Period) over the latitude range 30°N to 30°S-and possibly over the entire globe-may not have been materially different from the mean peak temperature so far attained during the Current Warm Period.
In one final study, Hall (2007) presented “radiocarbon and geomorphologic data that constrain [the] late-Holocene extent of the Collins Ice Cap on Fildes Peninsula (King George Island, South Shetland Islands: 62°10’51″S, 58°54’13″W),” which, in her words, “yield information on times in the past when climate in the South Shetland Islands must have been as warm as or warmer than today,” based on field mapping of moraines and glacial deposits adjacent to the ice cap, as well as radiocarbon dates of associated organic materials. Such data, according to Hall, “indicate ice advance after ~650 cal. yr BP (AD ~1300),” which she notes is “broadly contemporaneous with the ‘Little Ice Age’, as defined in Europe.” She also says that this was “the only advance that extended beyond the present ice margin in the last 3500 years, making the Little Ice Age in that part of the world likely the coldest period of the current interglacial. And the fact that “the present ice cap margin … is still more extensive than it was prior to ~650 cal. yr BP” led her to conclude that the climate prior to that time — which would have comprised the Medieval Warm Period — may have been “as warm as or warmer than present.” And this conclusion, along with the findings of the other studies reviewed herein, suggests there is nothing that is unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the current level of Earth’s warmth, which further suggests that the historical increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration may not have had anything to do with concomitant 20th-century global warming.
References
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We’ve had this evidence for a long time now. This just adds more to it. Primarily the evidence was found in historic records. Wine was planted as high as Denmark and in Japan the first novel of mankind was written. All this shows the same pattern as in the Roman warming period. In both cases culture exploded.
Excellent article, but I thought the late John L Daly had this well covered years ago when he wrote:
‘From all corners of the world, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age clearly shows up in a variety of proxy indicators, proxies more representative of temperature than the inadequate tree rings used by Michael Mann.’
The `Hockey Stick’: A New Low in Climate Science
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
Hemer and Harris (2003) – do you really trust the chronology of this core that much? Besides, radiocarbon dates need calibrating before they can be compared with dates on a calendar time scale.
This list shows that there are warm events in the low southern latitudes. It does not show that they are synchronous, and it does not show that they are synchronous with the North Atlantic MWP.
But if you could demonstrate that there was a large globally synchronous MWP, it would mean that climate sensitivity must be high and the change in climate forcings between the MWP and the pre-industrial are low.
REPLY: Wait until our next post at 10:30AM PDT and tell us again why you think you could demonstrate climate sensitivity is high during the MWP. – Anthony
I wonder if this excellent study was peer reviewed.
What this is an example of is that the emperical scientists are catching up to the desk bound computer scientists [?]. What else it’s an example of is that more and more and more studies have come out that reveal that AGW is bunk and more bunk and still more bunk.
It is also revelent that more and more MSM outlets are just beginning to catch on. When they fully catch on their wrath at the so called climate scientists will be a sight to behold. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of so called people. It will be ironic if the final death knell of the warmists is delivered by the MSM who did so much to promote them.
My God I must be”‘white listed”, my comment got posted immediatly. I warn you, Anthony, I’ve been snipped a number of times.
I fear it will be another lustrum or maybe even two before persistent lack of warming makes a serious dent in the public perception of the supposed ‘climate crisis’.
Any bets this work will be rubbished by the AGW crowd as soon as they can find a shill willing to produce a contrarian ‘proof’ that the MWP and Roman Warm Period never happened? If they can’t we can be sure they’ll go for ad hominem attacks on the authors and attempt to block further publication or referencing.
Edohiguma says:
April 11, 2013 at 7:20 am
“… All this shows the same pattern as in the Roman warming period. In both cases culture exploded”
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There can be little doubt that as far as mankind is concerned, the world is too cold. Mankind developed in warm Africa and it is only because of our ability to adapt ourselves (cover ourselves in animal skins and furs) and/or to adapt our environment (build shelters and fires) that we have been able to colonize the globe. If you look at where mankind can survive without such modifications, it will be noted that it is within a very narrow tropical band, particularly tropical rain forests.
You can trace the advancement of mankind and its link to temperature from the onset of the bronze and iron ages, to civilisation in general. Advancement comes first to warm climates. A stark example is that whilst those living in cold Britain were building Stonehenge, the Egyptioan were building mighty Pyramids, obalisks and temples. The engineering feat of the great pyramid is immense. The base was carved from the rocks of the Giza Plateau using cooper chisels to an accuracy that we would have trouble achieving today. The base extends over some 230 metres and is level to within 2.1cm. That is much the same tolerance as is found in the tallest buildings in the world built these past 20 years. This skill set was developed because the Egyptians were not struggling for survival holed up in some cave or taking shelter around a campfire in some wooden shack.
Those in fuel poverty can easily see how cold stunts achievement. When very cold, people take more to their beds, sleeping for longer periods or take root on the sofa with a quilt and a warm drink, instead of being active and doing something.
There has never been a notable northern climb civilisation. The nearest candidate would be the Vikings, and guess what, they were active in the Viking warm period and fell away when it bagan to cool.
The same is so for animal life. Far more bio diversity in warm and wet environs, and least bio diversity in cold and arid environs. Cold stunts whereas warmth stimulates.
One of the areas where I consider the greatest failings have occurred is in the proper evaluation of the effects of climate change. I am of the firm view that a warmer planet would generally be of great benefit to both mankind and the animal world.
There you go again, trying to use actual data and proper science to counter the psychotic beliefs of the deranged alarmists. It won’t work. Only their paranoia counts for them. Reality is irrelevant to their demands to stop the future and for mankind to commit suicide. I won’t even grace their madness with the label “religion”. It is too insane for even that label to be applicable.
Is there an answer? Yes! Stop feeding them.
Let’s see them put that into their rear view legacy climate models. Err, perhaps not. There’s a “C” and a “2” missing.
When discussing the MWP and debating whether it was or was not a global event, one often overlooks what is happening today.
Modern global warming is predominantlya Northern Hemisphere phenomen and much of it is found in warmer winter conditions. There is some evidence that the warming disproportionally consists of warmer winter night time temperatures.
This is quite important whan considering proxies. Since today’s warmth is predominantly occuring in the NH, it comes as no surprise that proxies of past warming periods may also show more warming in the NH compared to that in the SH. There is little doubt that the distribution of oceans (and their thermal damping) and land masses predominantly in the NH plays a part. Since the warming of today consists more of a change in winter temperatures 9ratherthan summer temperatures), again it would come as no surprise if proxies may dampen response to this warming since the growing period of the proxy may not be in the winter months, particularly if this was winter night time temperatures.
Certainly the IPCC 1990 -2001 appears to be the better fit with what e know from historical written record and archaelogical digs. In fact, i think that we have probably under-estimated the warth of the MWP. For Viking settlement to have flourished in Greenland for several hundred years, the weather must have been benign and these farmsteads could not be hanging on the edge of subsitence levels, Obviously even in warm periods there will always be the odd one or two harsh winters. The settlement in Greenland would not have survived unless generally times were bountiful so that they had surplus to enable to get through the odd bad winter or two.
Here in the UK where we have had a coldish winter, livestock farmers in Wales and Scotland are really struggling with much live stock casualties. This is notwithstanding our modern machinery, vast reserves of feedstock, heated barns etc. Just imaginge how the Viking farmers would have coped with similar conditions. It makes me consider that Greenland must have been a lot warmer (5 to 8 degC) warmer than today if they were to survive for hundreds of years.
Maybe its time to start compiling what might be called a Dossier on all actual evidence that has been overlooked, obscured, or just “disappeared” over the course of this perversion.
And structure it in a time line from when it was available back to 1988 or earlier. Including all accounts and historical references, undeniable agricultural practices, and the like, along with specific scientific studies. In other words the sum total of human knowledge that relates to climate that was built over centuries and has been either obliterated or ignored.
Show these things, and hold these people to account for much more than just touting a particular ideologically based speculation: the trashing of human history and culture itself.
>Wait until our next post at 10:30AM PDT and tell us again why you think you could demonstrate climate sensitivity is high during the MWP.
I won’t wait. I’ll answer right now.
Michael Mann has argued that the Medieval Warm Period is not global because there was a negative feedback that caused LaNina like conditions in the tropics, and posited Cain’s Pacific Thermostat hypothesis as a possible culprit. When asked if this meant that in response to global warming, there would be a long term negative feedback and therefore climate models vastly overstate warming, Mann responded “I agree with that. I have a reputation as some sort of climate alarmist, but I think there is a missing negative feedback.” This was preceded by Mann joking to the questioner, “You don’t look like Dick.”
So if you say that MWP was global, then you have taken away a natural negative feedback.
Let’s not forget the “Medieval Warm Period Project” over at CO2 Science:
One of my hobbies is history and when ‘they’ tried to erase the Medieval Warm period, I started paying a lot more attention to the global warming issue. Until that very moment I was willing to believe that the planet was warming because of our CO2 emissions. History tells us that there was a warm period in Europe and China and that it was followed by a cold period. It was a “big deal”. It looked to me like they were stooping to fraud to get rid of the MWP. Hmmm. What else might be wrong with CAGW?
“But if you could demonstrate that there was a large globally synchronous MWP, it would mean that climate sensitivity must be high and the change in climate forcings between the MWP and the pre-industrial are low.
REPLY: Wait until our next post at 10:30AM PDT and tell us again why you think you could demonstrate climate sensitivity is high during the MWP. – Anthony
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Anthony he is not saying sensitivity is high DURING the MWP. he is noting this:
Have a look at the swing between the high of the MWP and the low of the LIA.
That is delta T.
Sensitivity is Delta T/ Delta F where F is change in forcing. Steve Mcintyre has also pointed this out. If you argue for a higher MWP you are basically arguing for a higher climate sensitivity.
If Delta T ( as shown above ) is ca. 1.25C and the change in forcing is .5 watts
then you’ve got a sensitivity of 2.5… and a sensitivity to doubling c02 of 2.5 * 3.7
big number. If delta T is .5C and the change in forcing is .5 W, then you have
a sensitivity of 1, and a sensitivity to doubling c02 of 3.7.
Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.
The bigger the swing in natural oscillations the higher our risk from anthro forcing.
Seems like the normal purveyance of climate that I read about from 1960-1990, prior to the anthro-CO2 fantasy.
Sarcastically: Gee, how did the IPCC miss this?
(Yes, I know they’re only required to study human-caused warming)
Loehle’s reconstruction clearly shows presence of the MWP.
Dr. Jean Dickey of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena suggest there is a possible link between the Earth’s magnetic field and the global temperature variability (see link below).
If Dr Dickey is correct than should be a measurable correlation between the Loehle’s reconstruction data and changes in the geomagnetic field; indeed that is the case
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
End GRANT SCIENCE and financing for results – give us what we demand and we will give you more research money – AKA as you can keep your University.think tank job. If this project is passed to the millions now looking for a way to make government smaller. Send this to all you know on your email list so it can be VIRAL . . No IRS, no EPA, no Species act, no law suits to stop or delay projects and job creation.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/todays-patriots-and-article-v-will-save-this-nation.html
I like what happens when you add the gold-price [sice 1265AD] to that MWP signature:
http://i.imgur.com/NZC5Zf2.jpg
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
…
If Delta T ( as shown above ) is ca. 1.25C and the change in forcing is .5 watts
then you’ve got a sensitivity of 2.5… and a sensitivity to doubling c02 of 2.5 * 3.7
big number. If delta T is .5C and the change in forcing is .5 W, then you have
a sensitivity of 1, and a sensitivity to doubling c02 of 3.7.
Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.
The bigger the swing in natural oscillations the higher our risk from anthro forcing.
————
Meh. Maybe. Maybe I’m not understanding your argument Steven. It seems to me this argument presupposes that CO2 is an important driver in the first place.
Let’s think this through. Say there is some currently unknown solar amplification mechanism that has driven climate variability in the past. Or whatever; it doesn’t have to be solar. Start without the presupposition that the mechanism is specifically CO2 related. Supposing natural climate variability exhibited wider swings due to such a mechanism does not appear to speak to the question of the effect of CO2 and particularly positive feedbacks involved with increase atmospheric CO2 at all.
What am I missing?
“This list shows that there are warm events in the low southern latitudes. It does not show that they are synchronous, and it does not show that they are synchronous with the North Atlantic MWP.”
The dispute is over the global synchronicity. So much sceptical discussion does not recognise this. SAR and TAR rejected FAR’s findings on the evidence. The graph in FAR was not based on global evidence and should not be trotted out again and again as though it is a standard to which the IPCC should return.
It is time to take positive actions to end the usurping Federal government – end the IRS, EPA, BLM, FHA, HLS, NDAA and all the rest of the alphabet agencies that are not included in Article I section 8 of the enumerated powers. . . GRANT SCIENCE IS BRIBERY BY THE GOVERNMENT.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/todays-patriots-and-article-v-will-save-this-nation.html
@richard verney Sorry dude, you cannot cut granite with copper chisels… No way no how in any universe… Simple physics… You might be able to make a case that they traded for iron and hardened it… Otherwise from the tooling marks in left over granite and the perfect geometry of certain cuts you are stuck with the Egyptians having advanced tools like rock saws and such….
Back to Climate…
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
EXCELLENT!
That is a very mechanistic perspective concerning how the earth’s climate system actually works.
Let’s start with a presumption that the Medievel Warm Period was present, was global, and that temperatures approximated today’s GMT.
What kinds of sources could be postulated as candidates for the forcings which drove the WMP?
Steven Mosher,
“Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.”
Doesn’t this rather assume that the forcings are very well understood? If we don’t even know whether there was a MWP or not, then clearly we don’t have a great understanding of the forcings. So that makes the whole “sensitivity” issue rather moot, surely.
Mark Bofill says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:58 am
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
————-
I guess to frame my problem with this more in line with your original point, how do we know what sort of changes in forcings were involved in past climate variability; why are we assuming it was low?
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
Nope. Straw man. Climate doesn’t have just one sensitivity. Sensitivity to each particular forcing will be different. We don’t know for sure what the forcing change was during the MWP but it wasn’t SUVs.
richard verney says: April 11, 2013 at 7:58 am
Since the warming of today consists more of a change in winter temperatures (rather than summer temperatures), again it would come as no surprise if proxies may dampen response to this warming since the growing period of the proxy may not be in the winter months.
The CET data agree,
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MidSummer-MidWinter.htm
England’s tree core proxies are more likely to show summer precipitation than the annual temperature.
Steven Mosher,
No, there might very well be a natural variability causing the climate to vary as it has without any variation in external ‘forcings’ causing this. The response to an assumed ‘forcing’ described by an equally assumed scalar value of ‘sensitivity’ is something distinctly different than ‘natural variability’, and of course both phenomena might have been present during the last millenium.
And as others have pointed out, the description of one climate, ruled by one (sum of all) forcing, through one sensitivity parameter is of course a very crude and only descriptice simplification. I cannot be used as an ‘explanation’ of what is going on.
Edohiguma says: April 11, 2013 at 7:20 am
‘Wine was planted as high as Denmark’ and you can grow grapes today in England!
Interesting points about negative feedbacks MikeN. Perhaps we are running into a similar situation now, with a warming Arctic but relatively stable temperatures elsewhere.
Richard Verney
What you say about predominantly NH warming, and there predominantly in winter and at night makes sense, and may indicate that it this indeed is due to an enhanced greenhouse effect. But it also means that the scare of massive, large and global feedback effects sound almost implausible, and that there really is no reason for any climate alarmism …
Sensitive to what? We don’t know the cause of the MWP hence we don’t know what kind of forcing we are talking about (there is no proxi that suggests higher CO2 during the MWP) or how big that unknown forcing was. Maybe the forcing was very strong and the resulting delta T relatively small (whilst in absolute terms quite considerable and impacting our climate globally) and thus one could argue a negative feedback and rather low sensitivity.
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
“But if you could demonstrate that there was a large globally synchronous MWP, it would mean that climate sensitivity must be high and the change in climate forcings between the MWP and the pre-industrial are low.
REPLY: Wait until our next post at 10:30AM PDT and tell us again why you think you could demonstrate climate sensitivity is high during the MWP. – Anthony
##############################
Anthony he is not saying sensitivity is high DURING the MWP. he is noting this:
Have a look at the swing between the high of the MWP and the low of the LIA.
That is delta T.
Sensitivity is Delta T/ Delta F where F is change in forcing. Steve Mcintyre has also pointed this out. If you argue for a higher MWP you are basically arguing for a higher climate sensitivity.
If Delta T ( as shown above ) is ca. 1.25C and the change in forcing is .5 watts
then you’ve got a sensitivity of 2.5… and a sensitivity to doubling c02 of 2.5 * 3.7
big number. If delta T is .5C and the change in forcing is .5 W, then you have
a sensitivity of 1, and a sensitivity to doubling c02 of 3.7.
Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.
The bigger the swing in natural oscillations the higher our risk from anthro forcing.
*************
You are making the assumption that the oscillations are due to a change in input, aka forcing. Do you have any data that the system is not in a state of oscillation much like a pendulum, just swinging back and forth from some kick (the end of the last ice age?) or some small periodic input?
A very important question is, how does the world switch from cold to warm and back again in pre history when there was no Human activity to blame?
richard telford says:
April 11, 2013 at 7:26 am
“But if you could demonstrate that there was a large globally synchronous MWP, it would mean that climate sensitivity must be high and the change in climate forcings between the MWP and the pre-industrial are low.”
I support what Jonas N says.
Mosher reiterates Richard’s point but the concept presupposes that a change in global temperature must be driven by a change in forcing external to the system. In the complex, chaotic system that is earth’s climate, one must not dismiss the idea that perturbations occur without external forcing changes. I think that Dr. Roy Spencer has made the same point on his blog.
We definitely need to get the messages of John L. Daly and the other scientists who have demonstrated the global reality of the MWP out to the general public.
But even more than that, we need to communicate to middle-class and low-income people how the green agenda, and the specific agenda of the Obama administration, will harm them. Posters here may recall the “Stop global warming hype” billboard put up by CFACT. Here are suggrestions for two more billboards, which I will also communicate to CFACT:
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MEANS TO INCREASE YOUR ENERGY COSTS.
IF YOU ARE LIVING ON A LOW INCOME:
• How will gasoline at $8, maybe even $10 a gallon affect you?
• How will electricity at 30 cents per kilowatt hour affect you?
• How will natural gas at $20 a therm affect you?
THESE ARE THE PRICES FOR ENERGY PLANNED BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.
THINK ABOUT IT. DO YOU WANT THIS?
(in Spanish):
LA ADMINISTRACION DEL PRESIDENTE OBAMA INTENTA SUBIR SUS COSTOS DE ENERGIA.
SI VD. VIVE POR INGRESOS BAJOS:
• ?Cómo le importa a Vd. la gasolina al precio de $8, quizás aún $10 por galón?
• ?Cómo le importa a Vd. la electricidad al precio de 30 centavos por kilowatt-hora?
• ?Cómo le importa a Vd. el gas natural al precio de $20 por therm?
ESTOS SON LOS PRECIOS PROYECTADOS POR LA ADMINISTRACION DEL PRESIDENTE OBAMA.
PIENSE VD. SOBRE ELLO. ?ES LO QUE QUIERE VD.?
(my apologies for the upside-down question marks – not available on Microsoft’s character map).
Steven Mosher said (at 8:25 above) “If you argue for a higher MWP you are basically arguing for a higher climate sensitivity”.
But we are not involved in a debate or argument – only evidence, wherever that might lead to. If it’s to higher (dT/dF) climate sensitivity then that is the fact of it.
Brant Ra at 9:22 above says that “you cannot cut granite with copper chisels”. I assume he is basing that statement on the Mohs Hardness test – that in a contest between the two materials, copper, the softer material must yield. That is incorrect. Consider, for example, glass and wood. Glass is by far the harder material. Yet place a fine wineglass on the floor and drop a log on it. The glass will yield.
The issue is not hardness but the transfer of force. Soft tools may transfer large forces if used properly. By transferring the forces in just the right places, granite can be split in remarkably straight lines. Even carving and polishing can be accomplished without the hypothesized need to continually resharpen copper tools. Drilling doesn’t require metal at all. Percussive drilling techniques can make very neat holes in granite using nothing more than wood, rope and another piece of rock.
It is possible that the pyramid-makers had access to iron tools from the Hittites. It is also plausible that they accomplished their construction with only copper. Given the brittleness of iron at that time (not to mention the cost), I consider unlikely that they used pure iron tools. It possible that they may have used a third option – primarily copper tools with embedded harder materials at the edge, similar to when you edge-weld a piece of higher-carbon steel as the bit of your axe. But that’s purely speculation on my part.
I have posted this before …::
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.
However, there is warming indicated in the immediate area of the majority of the proxies!!
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 only 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 those in eastern China ..which were warmer also?
Methinks perhaps the model was overtweaked.
Caption of Fig. 2. Reconstructed surface temperature pattern for MCA (950 to 1250 C.E.) and LIA (1400 to 1700 C.E.). Shown are the mean surface temperature anomaly (left) and associated relative weightings of various proxy records used (indicated by size of symbols) for the low-frequency component of the reconstruction (right). Anomalies are defined relative to the 1961– 1990 reference period mean.
Could someone help me to understand Steven Mosher’s sensitivity argument? If the delta T is some number that results from an unknown combination of forcings and feedbacks represented as an equivalent TOA forcing, how does that constrain sensitivity? How does he know what the net delta F was a thousand years ago?
And still they “deny” the MWP!
Michael Cohen says:
April 11, 2013 at 11:36 am
Could someone help me to understand Steven Mosher’s sensitivity argument? If the delta T is some number that results from an unknown combination of forcings and feedbacks represented as an equivalent TOA forcing, how does that constrain sensitivity? How does he know what the net delta F was a thousand years ago?
—————–
Michael,
As to the first question, I think he’s simply defining sensitivity that way. Not saying I’ve got a problem with that definition. As to the second, that’s the real question, yes. I don’t know.
@profitup10 –
The item your link refers to is aboiut the LAST thing we would want to say, if we want people of color to support the effort to discredit AGW. You want to repeal the 14th Amendment? Get real.
That item is a true display of rightwing craziness, right up there with and no different from the left’s craziness.
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
“Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.
The bigger the swing in natural oscillations the higher our risk from anthro forcing”
Zero times Zero is still ZERO
Wait, what? That is illogical and easily disproved. Hypothetical: suppose there was a large impact event around 1400, one larger than Tunguska but obviously not a global killer (or if you prefer, a string of monster volcanic eruptions) and created a discernable 400 year LIA. In these cases, by definition your theory falls flat. Period.
The point is this, under that hypothetical impact/volcanic scenario the MWP to LIA sine wave is in fact a non-Anthro natural oscillation. So your quote, stated as fact, is patently ridiculous. It only exists in your modeling rationalizations.
Michael Cohen: Could someone help me to understand Steven Mosher’s sensitivity argument?
It is easy to explain. First, you assume the model used to transform your proxy measurements into temperature. Then you presume that the modeled delta T is due to a combination of forcings . Then you conjure a delta forcing and divide that into your modeled delta T and *poof* you have your scientifically and exactly calibrated sensitivity to be reported to n significant figures.
In other words you have a conjecture divided by a guess multiplied by a made up fudge factor that results in the value close to what you wanted to see in the first place. Said process and result being hidden in many pages of obtuse verbiage and irrelevant mathematical and statistical nonsense. In the event that doesn’t work, select and/or correct your data set until it does. Then lose both your corrections, selections, adjustments, models and the original data. Unfortunately, the same thing is generally done by both sides of the argument. It is anything but science. It only has to look sciency.
It is as always: everyone talks about the weather but no one can do anything about it but come in out of the rain, wind, and cold. The favorite cure by the alarmists, stopping the use of fossil fuels and insisting on replacing it with “alternative energy”, will have the same impact upon the weather as the human sacrifices of the Aztecs. There will be no measurable effect on the weather However, far more people will die as a result and likely already have which, I contend, was the goal of the alarmists from the get go.
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
“Anthony he is not saying sensitivity is high DURING the MWP. he is noting this:
Have a look at the swing between the high of the MWP and the low of the LIA.
That is delta T.
Sensitivity is Delta T/ Delta F where F is change in forcing. Steve Mcintyre has also pointed this out. If you argue for a higher MWP you are basically arguing for a higher climate sensitivity.”
Your argument turns on a crucial ambiguity in the word “forcing.” You must distinguish between known and unknown forcings. Some forcings are known, such as aerosols from volcanoes. Most forcings are unknown; that is, we do not have a clue what caused the change in temperature.. There is a debate over the magnitude of the forcing from CO2.
Steve Mosher:
What are you talking about? GHGes had nothing to do with the MWP, so how can you conclude that climate sensitivity to radiatively active gases is “high” based on the MWP?
The system responds to any forcing in the manner that best achieves thermal-kinetic equilibrium. The solar wind, for example, dynamically perturbs the upper atmosphere via ozone depletion and the QBO/tropopause height, hence heavily affecting the behavior of the MJO through lower stratospheric warming/cooling, and thus provoking a direct response from the Hadley Cells, Angular Momentum, the Rossby wave train, tropical cloud cover, etc.
The manner in which the system would respond to increased GHGes is unknown.
Sorry richard if I read this all wrong but what does the following present? It is actually one of the references above. Here is the summary.
And
Abstract
……These warmer regional episodes were not strongly synchronous……..
Malcolm K. Hughes, – 1994
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01092410
How strong is strong?
Steven Mosher
You make a silly assumption that the forcing between the MWP and LIA was only 0.5W/m2.
This is ridiculous
Between 1987 and 2000 there was a 5% decrease in cloud cover corresponding to a 0.9w/m2 forcing and the corresponding change in global temp was approximately 0.3-0.4 deg C including the extra forcing from greenhouse gases.
This compares to the 0.6deg expected just from greenhouse gasses in the last 30 years and the 2deg expected in the last 100 years if climate sensitivity was high.
The forcing between the MWP and LIA is more likely to be in the 10-15W/m2 range than 0.5 W/m2.
Some Warmists have said that the Medieval Warm Period was NOT globally synchronous. Fine. Now imagine if the following was to occur today. What would they say? There would be much gnashing and grinding of teeth about climate change. It would make the front page news as a sure sign of GLOBAL WARMING!!! They think they a dealing with a bunch of fools. By the way this was not the weather but the climate!!!
What was that about the Arctic melt and colder winters? How is one to make head or tail of this?
Brant Ra says:
April 11, 2013 at 9:22 am
@richard verney Sorry dude, you cannot cut granite with copper chisels…
//////////////////////////////////
The Giza plateau is made of limestone, not granite.
The great Pyramid was constructed approximately 2,500BC.
The iron age has no uniform chronological date (it depends upon regions, warmer climes usually being in advance of cooler climes) but is generally around 1300BC in Egypt, Cyprus, Aegean, although there are a few ancient Egyptian iron artefacts that date earlier.
Steven Mosher says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:25 am
Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.
The bigger the swing in natural oscillations the higher our risk from anthro forcing.
==============
No, that only works (maybe) if climate is linear. Chaotic systems do not respond in that fashion. For example, Apollo 13 did not have enough fuel to return home, yet they made it. The forcing remained exactly the same, yet they were able to obtain a greater Delta by selecting a different, lower energy path. This is impossible using a simplistic linear model.
In the linear model there is only one path to the future. In a linear world the future is a clockwork result of the past. Everything is already written by the initial state of the universe. Quantum mechanics tells us otherwise. There are infinite paths to the future with each no more than a probability. No future result is certain, regardless of forcings or feedbacks.
It is apparent that Steve Mosher and the climate science community conside all forcings to be the same, IE, two watts per sq’M of solar increase, is the same as two watts per sq’M back radiation due to CO2. I find this quites astounding, even ignoring the herd of donkey assumtions with regard to the CO2 forcing.
Let us say that today those two forcings both happen at the same time, they will not have the same affect, as they travel different roads. Now tonight the CO2 is likely to, at best, delay the timeing of the evening low. The erth continues to radiatively cool through the night, by the time of sunrise most all that extra energy has left the atmosphere. However the solar input, that has fallen on about 2/3rds ocean, 1% of the insolation penetrating from 200 to 800 feet. none of that 1% energy has left the earth, and tomorrow and for the next dozen years, or more, if the sun stays unusually active, most of that daily energy increase will stil be in the much longer residence time of the oceans at those depths, until eventually that energy reaches an equalibrium within a far greater heat sink. And for a long time that large raised heat sink, will affect the atmosphere.
Each wavelength of incoming TSI has a different residence time within the atmosphere, land and ocean. This residence time is of course affected by it own inherent properties as well as all of the material it encounters. Then my own little physics law…”Only two things can effect the energy content of any system in a radiative balance. Either a change in the input, or a change in the “residence time” of some aspect of those energies within the system.”
Every year in January the earth is recieving 7% more insolation, then in June. yet the earth’s atmosphere is cooler, despite recieving more insolation. However I think it likely the earth is heating up at this time. Yes, it is losing some of that additional energy from albedo in the NH. But it is absorbing, day by day more intense and direct energy into an area that is mostly ocean. The SH is almost all ocean, and the atmosphere is losing much of that eneregy, not to space, but into the oceans.
All forcing are not the same. All feedbacks are not the same to all forcings.
Theo Goodwin says: “Most forcings are unknown….”
That’s a very strange thing to say. If they are unknown, how do you know they outnumber known forcings? JP
Jimbo says:
April 11, 2013 at 4:20 pm
richard telford says:
April 11, 2013 at 7:26 am
…………..
This list shows that there are warm events in the low southern latitudes. It does not show that they are synchronous, and it does not show that they are synchronous with the North Atlantic MWP.
Sorry richard if I read this all wrong but what does the following present? It is actually one of the references above. Here is the summary.
##################
Synchronous behaviour during the deglaciation, 11 thousand years ago, for Greenland and part of Antarctica is not evidence that the MCA was global.
Equally, synchronous behaviour on Milankovitch time scales is not evidence that behaviour should be synchronous on sub-Milankovitch time scales.
Please ignore, or moderators erase, my post at David says: April 11, 2013 at 9:44 pm. I was very tired and expressed very poorly.
Here are the same thoughts and questions, better articulated.
It is apparent that Steve Mosher and the climate science community consider all forcings to be the same, IE, two W/m2 increase of solar insolation, is the same as two W/m2 back radiation due to CO2. I find this quite astounding, even ignoring the herd of donkey assumptions with regard to the CO2 forcing.
Presuming those two forcing both happen at the same time, they will not have the same affect, as they travel different roads. The CO2 is likely to, at best, delay the timing of the evening low. The earth continues to radiatively cool through the night, by the time of sunrise most all that extra energy has left the atmosphere. Certainly most of it has.
However, 1% of the insolation, which penetrates into the ocean to a depth from 200 to 800 feet, none of that 1% energy has left the earth, and tomorrow and for the next dozen years, or more, if the sun stays unusually active, most of that daily energy increase will still be in the much longer residence time of the oceans at those depths, until eventually that energy reaches an equilibrium within a far greater heat sink. And for a long time that large raised heat sink, will affect the atmosphere.
Each wavelength of incoming TSI has a different residence time within the atmosphere, land and ocean. This residence time is of course affected by it own inherent properties as well as all of the material it encounters. Then my own little physics law…”Only two things can effect the energy content of any system in a radiative balance. Either a change in the input, or a change in the “residence time” of some aspect of those energies within the system.”
Every year in January the earth is receiving 7% more insolation, then in June. yet the earth’s atmosphere is cooler, despite receiving more insolation. However, I think it likely the earth is heating up at this time. Yes, it is losing some of that additional energy from albedo in the N.H. But it is absorbing, day by day, more intense and direct energy into an area that is mostly ocean. The S.H. is almost all ocean, and the atmosphere is losing much of that energy, not to space, but into the oceans! Some of that change in energy input at times of increased solar activity, which can last decades, has a very long residence time, some of it days, some of it week, some of it years , decades, and some of it centuries. It is a continues accumalation every day, so that over hundreds of days, a small change , becomnes quite large.
It therefore follows that any effect which increases the residence time of LW energy in the atmosphere, W/V for instance, but reduces the input of SW energy entering the oceans, causes a net reduction in the earth’s energy balance, proportioned to the energy change involved
relative to the residence time of the radiations involved.
All forcing are not the same. All feedbacks also are not the same to all forcings.
@ Edohiguma.
I have pointed out before that there were Greek and Roman novels written before Hikari Genji. Why do you repeat “in Japan the first novel of mankind was written”?
E.M. Smith just posted a report about many changes and warmer periods during the last 10,000 years from the study of peat.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/oh-for-the-love-of-peat/
richard telford , my bad. Next time I should read. 🙂 Now check these I did read. 🙂
Imagine what papers we would get if governments started funding to the tune of billions research to find that the Medieval Warm Period was synchronous. You see, most climate scientists are looking for what their paymasters want.
Read the following as a whole.
And we have reported on September 7, 2011
Dear Richard Verney,
for the love of a merciful god PLEASE spellcheck your comments before posting!
Thank you.
David says:
April 11, 2013 at 9:44 pm
///////////////////////////////////
Don’t over look that solar can penetrate the oceans to depth and therefore can heat the oceans.
DWLWIR, on the otherhand, can at best penetrate the ocean by about 10 microns and cannot effectively heat the oceans. If DWLWIR has sensible energy and can perform sensible work in the ocean environ, it would appear that it merely contributes towards driving evaporation and thereby helping to cool the very top surface layer of the ocean.
David says:
April 11, 2013 at 9:44 pm
It is apparent that Steve Mosher and the climate science community conside all forcings to be the same, IE, two watts per sq’M of solar increase, is the same as two watts per sq’M back radiation due to CO2.
—————–
Yes, which leads me to a strange question that never occurred to me before:
CO2 by itself is a fairly insignificant factor; this is not a controversial statement I believe. If all forcings are the same and are anonymous, does this mean that the expected positive feedbacks (I.E., increase in water vapor enhancing the greenhouse effect due to CO2) should happen for any and every increase in forcing equivalent to the increase in forcing due to CO2?
***
richard telford says:
April 11, 2013 at 11:05 pm
Synchronous behaviour during the deglaciation, 11 thousand years ago, for Greenland and part of Antarctica is not evidence that the MCA was global.
Equally, synchronous behaviour on Milankovitch time scales is not evidence that behaviour should be synchronous on sub-Milankovitch time scales.
***
Oh, right, they all perfectly cancel each other out to form a straight handle, until, of course the last 100 yrs, which forms the hockey blade…..
Hi:
That the MWP was global or nearly so has been well established for quite a long time – the kind of work reported here amounts to little more than a rebuttal to the MWP denialists.
The more important task, I think, is to ask the warmists the obvious corolary questions: if the polar bear didn’t evolve in about 300 years, then why does global warming now spell its extinction? i.e. do they prefer to deny evolution, the MWP, or their own hype? SImilarly, why didn’t the Thames, Yangtze, and other estuaries flood during the MWP? Canada’s PEI was above water during the period, so was what is now Manhatten. So what do the warmists want to deny? their own threat visions? the MWP? or history and geology?
Jimbo says:
April 12, 2013 at 5:08 am
Dmitri Mauquoy et. al. – 2004
Late Holocene climatic changes in Tierra del Fuego based on multiproxy analyses of peat deposits
“…..Our reconstruction for warm/dry conditions between ca. A.D. 960–1020 closely agrees with Northern Hemisphere tree-ring evidence for the MWP and shows that the MWP was possibly synchronous in both hemispheres, as suggested by Villalba (1994)……”
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The plant macrofossil data shown here is a measure of bog surface wetness. As the study was not replicated, it is difficult to know if the patterns are climatically driven or just due to inherent bog variability. It is easy to make a link between surface wetness and precipitation, the link to temperature is more tenuous.
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Chris S. M. Turney et. al. – 2004
Millennial and orbital variations of El Niño/Southern Oscillation and high-latitude climate in the last glacial period
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6980/abs/nature02386.html
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This paper shows that Dansgaard–Oeschger events, large temperature excursions in Greenland during the last glacial period, correlate with dry events in Australia, because of changes in ENSO activity. This paper is of minimal relevance to the Holocene, and as it does not reconstruct Australian temperatures, reveals nothing about the global extent of temperature changes associated with D-O events.
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LIU Yu et. al. 2011
Amplitudes, rates, periodicities and causes of temperature variations in the past 2485 years and future trends over the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau
“The results showed that extreme climatic events on the Plateau, such as the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 20th Century Warming appeared synchronously with those in other places worldwide………..the mean temperature of the late Eastern Jin Event (2.67°C) was the highest in the 2485 years, even exceeding that of the second half of the 20th century (2.57°C)…..”
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This treering based temperature reconstruction presents some evidence that MCA in Tibet is synchronous with the MCA in Greenland. The paper offers no evidence of a globally synchronous MCA.
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New paper shows Earth was significantly hotter during past several thousand years
“…..finding that both were present in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and were relatively synchronous……”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-paper-shows-earth-was-significantly.html
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Ljungqvist (2011) is basically a hybrid of Marcott et al. (2013) and Osborn and Briffa (2006) The evidence in this paper for synchronous temperature changes in the Northern and Southern hemispheres is weak (at least in part because of the paucity of data from the south). The paper mentions the MCA only in passing.
Most of these papers offer zero evidence of a globally synchronous MCA. One presents very weak evidence. You need to critique the papers you read more effectively.
Mark Bofill says:
The water vapor feedback occurs in response to any warming by any forcing. In fact, some of the strongest evidence in support of the water vapor feedback acting approximately as modeled is from looking at the response of water vapor to the various temperature fluctuations such as those produced by ENSO.
It is only AGW skeptics who seem to believe that some forcings (those that are not anthropogenic, like solar) magically get magnified while forcings that they do not like do not get magnified. Strangely enough, these same people also seem to labor under the misconception that climate models treat CO2 forcings different from other forcings (as your post seems to sort of imply).
Thanks Joel. I wasn’t trying to imply anything though, I was merely asking.
Please don’t confuse Steven Mosher with the climate science community,
Steven Mosher, B.A. Philosophy and English, Northwestern University (1981); Director of Operations Research/Foreign Military Sales & Marketing, Northrop Aircraft Northrop Aircraft (1985-1990); Vice President of “Engineering” [Marketing], Eidetics International (1990-1993); Director of Marketing, Kubota Graphics Company (1993-1994); Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Criterion Software (1994-1995); Vice President of Emerging Technology [Marketing], Creative Labs (1995-2006); Marketing, Openmoko (2007-2009); Marketing Consultant, Qi Hardware Inc. (2009); Marketing Consultant (2010-Present); [Marketing] Advisor, RedZu Online Dating Service (2012-Present)
Mark Bofill says:
April 12, 2013 at 6:33 am
David says:
April 12, 2013 at 4:27 pm
It is apparent that Steve Mosher and the climate science community consider all forcings to be the same, IE, two W/m2 increase of solar insolation, is the same as two W/m2 back radiation due to CO2. I find this quite astounding, even ignoring…
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Yes, which leads me to a strange question that never occurred to me before:
CO2 by itself is a fairly insignificant factor; this is not a controversial statement I believe. If all forcings are the same and are anonymous, does this mean that the expected positive feedbacks (I.E., increase in water vapor enhancing the greenhouse effect due to CO2) should happen for any and every increase in forcing equivalent to the increase in forcing due to CO2?
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Mark, I do not know how else to interpret Steve Mosher’s comment…”Bottomline: the bigger the swing between the MWP and the LIA, the HIGHER the sensitivity.
The bigger the swing in natural oscillations the higher our risk from anthro forcing.”
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The key summation aginst this is my assertion….…”Only two things can effect the energy content of any system in a radiative balance. Either a change in the input, or a change in the “residence time” of some aspect of those energies within the system.”
Most people do not stop and consider that statement as a key to understanding energy systems. Each input into the earths’s system (Land, ocean, & atmosphere) encounters different properties, based on the materials that energy contacts. A certain wave length of SW energy is reflected back to space by clouds, the equivalent energy, in a different vibrational frequency, can penetrate up to 800′ into the ocean, and remain within the earth’s system for centuries.
Every change in input into the earths energy system causing a net change in the earth’s energy balance, must be evaluated according to the energy change involved, RELATIVE TO THE RESIDENCE TIME OF SAID ENERGY of the radiations involved. Different vibrational wave lenghts, travel different roads, each one having a different RESIDENCE TIME depending on the materials said energy encounters. This appears to me to be incontrovertabl true, and I do not know how some miss this.
Traffic on a road is a very good analogy to describe the different affect of an equal W/m2 change to any system in a radiative balance…
1. On a empty highway if ten cars per hour begin to continuesly enter the highway, and the cars are on the road for ten hours before exiting, there will be 100 cars on the road and as long as these factors remain the same the system is in balance. If you change the INPUT to eleven cars per hour, then over a ten hour period the system will increase from 100 cars to 110 cars before a balance is restored and no further increase occurs. The same effect as the increase in INPUT achieves can be realized by either slowing the cars down 10% or by lengthening the road 10%. In either case you have increased the energy in the system by ten percent by either increasing the residence time or the input.
2. Now lets us take the case of a very slow or long road with the same input. Ten cars per hour input, 1000 hours on the road, now you have ten thousand cars on the road. Now lets us increase the input to eleven cars per hour just as we did on the road with a ten hour residence time. Over a 1,000 hour period we have the same 10% increase in cars (energy) How ever, due to the greater capacity on that road, the cars (energy) have increased 100 times relative to the 10 hour road with a 10% increase in input. (1,000 car increase verses a 10 car increase.) Any change in the input or the residence time in this 1,000 hour road will have a 100 times greater effect then on the 10 hour road if the input change endures for 1,000 hours. The ocean of course is the 1000 hour road, the atmosphere is the 10 hour road.
Those that assume all inputs into the system have the same senstivity are simply wrong.
richard verney says:
April 12, 2013 at 5:55 am
David says:
April 11, 2013 at 9:44 pm
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Don’t over look that solar can penetrate the oceans to depth and therefore can heat the oceans.
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Thanks Richard, and I think I coverd that as it was directly referred to in my comment. Joel Shore appears to think that all forcings are the same, and W/V will be affected equally by any two forcings, just the same. Joel stated …”The water vapor feedback occurs in response to any warming by any forcing.”
Let us assume two equal W/m2 forcing changes, one in the spectrum of the sun which is reflected by clouds, one in the spectrum which most effectively by passes clouds. The first one has a fairly short residence time in the earth, as it is reflected back to space, and it does not increase W/V in the system. The next one strikes for more of the srface, including the ocean, where it by passes most of the top surface, and resides deeper in the ocean. This very slowly increases W/V. Now take a third change to the surface, that of LWIR. It is entirely absorbed in the very top of the ocean surface, and most of that energy is converted to latent heat of evaporation, IE w/v.
Now we must quantify what that W/V does. Any increase in water vapor is in and of itself a spectral modification of incoming TSI, reducing SW radiation at the surface, which we all agree is the primary mechanism which heats the ocean below the surface. The amounts of that TSI energy taken out by O2, O3, and primarily H2O, which absorbs in the visible and near IR, causes perhaps 20% of the total solar energy to be captured by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that!
In an old John Daly article there was a comparison of two earths, one all ocean, one all land. A factor not discussed was how quickly would each earth reach their equilibrium temperature. Now for this assume two earths with no sun. One is again land, the other frozen ocean. Now a sun like ours magically appears. The land earth very quickly reaches its radiative balance. The ocean earth takes far longer, perhaps 1,000 times longer, but eventually its atmospheric mean temperature is warmer then the land earth due to the immensely greater energy within it coming from the oceans keeping the planet warm at night.
The summary to all this is really very simple. Whatever controls the energy content of the ocean on such a planet as our earth is the primary driver of climate. And the answer is SWR from the sun, either increasing or decreasing at the ocean surface, is the primary driver of our planets energy budget. To assume that a small effect which barely increases the LWR in the atmosphere, at the expense of a reduction in SWR entering the oceans, controls the climate and earths energy budget, is to claim that a small puff of wind can reverse the direction of an ocean liner under throttle. It is changes in the Sun’s vibrational wave length, even if TSI remains about the same, affecting changes in cloud cover and location, that primarily affect how much or how little SWR enters the ocean. I remember seeing an early IPCC chart stating that both cloud formation and the oceans are poorly understood.
This admission alone stops CAGW in its tracks, but I doubt the IPCC would repeat that statement today.