This is just nuts, sorry, I just don’t have any other words for it.
Computer modeling and simulations are not hard data nor empirical proof, especially when trying to hindcast the upper atmosphere temperature back to 1860, well before radiosonde data exists. They can’t even calibrate the output against real-world upper air data for the majority of the time series. But, illogically, these authors claim that their method is sound. And, the timing is suspect. Look at the laundry list of names on the publication too. The fingerprint graphic seen on the second graph is downright corny, as if maybe the public just wouldn’t “get it” unless they put an actual human fingerprint on their graph. It’s like they threw this together as an insurance policy in case the IPCC AR5 report wasn’t convincing enough. -Anthony
(Phys.org) —A team of climatologists with members from the U.S., Australia, Canada and Norway is claiming in a paper they’ve had published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that they have found proof that global warming is being caused by human influences. They are basing their claims on computer simulations they’ve run and data obtained from three decades’ worth of satellite observations.
Most of the world’s scientists agree that our planet is experiencing global warming. Most also generally support the theory that the cause of global warming is due to an increase in greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide. And while many also support the notion that the increase in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is likely due to human emissions, few are willing to go on record claiming that global warming is due directly to human activities. The researchers in this new effort are one such group and they claim they have proof.
Satellites, as most everyone knows, have been hovering over or circling our planet for over half a century. Over that time period they have grown progressively more sophisticated, measuring virtually every conceivable aspect of the planet below—from gas levels in the atmosphere to temperature readings on an averaged global scale, to the impact of natural events such as volcanic eruptions. It’s this data the researchers used in their attempt to root out the true source of global warming.
The research team conducted a two stage study. The first involved creating computer models that simulated climate evolution over the past several decades under three different scenarios: a world without human influence, a world with only human influence and a world without human emissions or naturally occurring incidents such as volcanic eruptions. The second stage involved gathering data from satellites and comparing it with what the team had found in creating their simulations. They say patterns emerged that prove that human influence is the cause behind global warming. One example they cite is data that shows that the troposphere (the part of the atmosphere closest to us) has seen a steady rise in temperature over the past several decades, even as the layer just above it, the stratosphere, has cooled slightly.
But what has the team really convinced that humans are the true source behind global warming, is that they were unable to produce the type of warming we’ve seen with just natural events—it’s only when human emissions are added to models that such a trend can be realistically simulated. That, they say, proves that human practices over the past several decades are responsible for global warming.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-satellite-global-humans.html#jCp
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
The paper:
Human and natural influences on the changing thermal structure of the atmosphere, PNAS, Published online before print September 16, 2013, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1305332110
Benjamin D. Santer, Jeffrey F. Painter, Céline Bonfils, Carl A. Mears, Susan Solomon, Tom M. L. Wigley, Peter J. Gleckler, Gavin A. Schmidt, Charles Doutriaux, Nathan P. Gillett, Karl E. Taylor, Peter W. Thorne, and Frank J. Wentz
Significance
Observational satellite data and the model-predicted response to human influence have a common latitude/altitude pattern of atmospheric temperature change. The key features of this pattern are global-scale tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling over the 34-y satellite temperature record. We show that current climate models are highly unlikely to produce this distinctive signal pattern by internal variability alone, or in response to naturally forced changes in solar output and volcanic aerosol loadings. We detect a “human influence” signal in all cases, even if we test against natural variability estimates with much larger fluctuations in solar and volcanic influences than those observed since 1979. These results highlight the very unusual nature of observed changes in atmospheric temperature.
Abstract
Since the late 1970s, satellite-based instruments have monitored global changes in atmospheric temperature. These measurements reveal multidecadal tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling, punctuated by short-term volcanic signals of reverse sign. Similar long- and short-term temperature signals occur in model simulations driven by human-caused changes in atmospheric composition and natural variations in volcanic aerosols. Most previous comparisons of modeled and observed atmospheric temperature changes have used results from individual models and individual observational records. In contrast, we rely on a large multimodel archive and multiple observational datasets. We show that a human-caused latitude/altitude pattern of atmospheric temperature change can be identified with high statistical confidence in satellite data. Results are robust to current uncertainties in models and observations. Virtually all previous research in this area has attempted to discriminate an anthropogenic signal from internal variability. Here, we present evidence that a human-caused signal can also be identified relative to the larger “total” natural variability arising from sources internal to the climate system, solar irradiance changes, and volcanic forcing. Consistent signal identification occurs because both internal and total natural variability (as simulated by state-of-the-art models) cannot produce sustained global-scale tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. Our results provide clear evidence for a discernible human influence on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-satellite-global-humans.html#jCp
In reply to:
Observational satellite data and the model-predicted response to human influence have a common latitude/altitude pattern of atmospheric temperature change. The key features of this pattern are global-scale tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling over the 34-y satellite temperature record. We show that current climate models are highly unlikely to produce this distinctive signal pattern by internal variability alone, or in response to naturally forced changes in solar output and volcanic aerosol loadings.
William:
This paper is ignores paleo climatic data that disproves their hypothesis. The planet has cyclically warmed and cooled nine times during the current interglacial period the Holocene. The past nine warming and cooling periods were not caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. Paleo-climatologists refer to the cycle warming and cooling as a Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycle (named after the discoverers of the cycle). The regions that warmed in the last 150 years are the same regions that warmed in past Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
It appears the above paper is written by a biased group to push the extreme AGW agenda, as opposed to try to solve a scientific problem. The methodology to push the extreme AGW agenda is to ignore data, analysis, and logic that disproves their hypothesis.
Changes in planetary cloud cover will also cause tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling (the solar radiation (short wave) that is reflected by clouds heats the ozone in the stratosphere (incoming radiation and again if the short wave radiation is reflected). A reduction in planetary cloud cover therefore causes the troposphere to warm and stratospheric cooling.
The alternative mechanism – changes in planetary cloud cover – can explain the past nine warming and cooling periods. The alternative mechanism – changes in planetary cloud cover – can explain past and recent regional warming pattern.
As note in this paper that latitudinal pattern of warming observed in the last 150 years cannot be explained by the CO2 mechanism. As CO2 is more or less evenly distributed in the atmosphere the observed warming should be proportional to the long wave radiation that emitted off to space. As the most amount of long wave radiation emitted to space is in the tropics, if the warming in the last 150 years was caused by the increase in atmospheric CO2, the majority of the observed warming should be in the tropics. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth
That is not observed. The most amount of observed warming in the last 50 years is in high latitude Northern hemisphere regions and the most amount of warming in the Northern hemisphere is on the Greenland ice sheet which matches past D-O cycles. As other papers have noted the general circulation models (GCM) do not and cannot produce warming that matches the observed warming pattern in the last 50 years.
Another observation to support the above the comments, is the fact that there has been no warming of the tropical troposphere in the last 50 years.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.
New paper that again finds the upper troposphere is not warming as predicted.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044018
Discrepancies in tropical upper tropospheric warming between atmospheric circulation models and satellites Stephen Po-Chedley and Qiang Fu
The age of satellite data; whether real or simulated, began in 1957. I personally had the honor of reporting perhaps the earliest simulated satellite data, ever published in the Southern Hemisphere; the crusty side of the pizza.
It came about as the USA project Vanguard became project Rearguard. The Vanguard satellite was to broadcast on a frequency of 40.0 MHz, and my Electronics Professor Brian Earnshaw, had constructed a fancy digital counter, consuming every single 12AT7 vacuum tube in the entire country of New Zealand. He could feed it the audio beat frequency between the satellite signal and a 40.0 MHz reference to measure that frequency and get the Doppler shift information as Vanguard flew by.
Well sadly, this thing called Sputnik, happened first, and it didn’t beep at 40.0 MHz, but at 20.0 MHz instead. So while Earshaw scurried to get a 20.0 MHz reference oscillator going; we Radio-Physics students, got out our trusty ham radio receiver, and started to listen to the sputnik beeps, within hours of the launch.
So we had a roster of shifts of students, sleeping on a cot in the RP lab, and taking turns, listening for sputnik to come up over the 20.0 MHz radio horizon; which we could determine from ionospheric predictions for reception at the 20.0 MHz frequency. So we recording start and stop times for the audio beep, which we wrote down on a strip of toilet paper, or something equally pee-er reviewed; with a #2 pencil (see how that works). Actually the don’t have #2 pencils in New Zealand; which literally means #2 soft, as distinct from a 2H, which is a technical drawing pencil used for writing text. An HB pencil, sitting on the fence, so to speak is used for writing things down so they smudge easily.
So the idea was that The UofA was surrounded by the 20 MHz radio horizon circle of some reasonably known radius, and when sputnik, orbited about every 90 minutes, if it ever came within our circle, we could record the start and stop times, while it was in the circle. now earth rotates 15 deg. per hour, so the satellite orbit slews about 22.5 degrees between each orbit. Our radio horizon was big enough that at most we could get three successive transits through our circle, giving beep tracks of three different lengths offset 22.5 degrees apart. We had to rough guess the orbit inclination based on the reported launch site.
So we figured that if we tried to fit a pattern of three offset lines of different lengths onto our circle, we should be able to guess about where sputnik was when it passed through our circle. Well it was also desirable if it came near the center (on the middle track) and preferably at some time within about morning or evening twilight, where it might be sun illuminated, but in a darkened sky.
So we had watched it on out ham radio for about 48 hours, and had got some rough patterns figured out, so now we had some idea, where the orbit was in its slew pattern.
Well I was on watch around lunch time on the third day, and I was pretty excited, because it was looking like the pattern was saying we should have about an 8PM transit that evening, pretty close to the center of the circle.
Well I was day dreaming, and the telephone rang. So I picked it up, and it was some guy who said he was from the Auckland Star, evening newspaper. What if anything did we know about this Commie gizmo. Well I told him, we have been watching it on the radio, so anyone with a reasonable short wave, could listen in.
“Well”, the chap said, “what people really want to know, is when they might be able to actually see this thing if that was even possible.”
Well still half day dreaming, and certainly not thinking, I blurted out, “well if it was me, I would go up Mt Eden tonight around 8pm and watch it go overhead.”
So the guy hung up and I curled up on the cot for a bit.
Well later that day, the Star came out, and there splashed across the front page, it said:-
“The Radio-Physics Department at the UofA has calculated that the sputnik satellite will be directly visible over Auckland at 8:00 pm tonight.”
Blimey ! what idiot told them that ? I hadn’t said word oe of any calculating; I just said I would go up Mt Eden and look.
Damn ! thousands of people went up Mt Eden, and One Tree Hill, and many of the other 60 volcanos in the greater Auckland area, before 8 pm that evening, and right on schedule, sputnik came up brightly illuminated over the horizon and passed directly overhead right near 8:00 pm.
Not me, I went to bed early because I had been up too many hours looking at sputnik on the radio.
So I had to figure out a new possible time for the next evening to get my first glimpse of sputnik, that thousands had seen the night before.
So yes, I know all about simulated satellite data; I have made up plenty of my own.
As a side note, Professor (actually Senior Lecturer at the time) Earnshaw, recorded the sputnik audio beat signals on a paper magnetic tape recorder, as they existed at the time, and then he ran those signals into his whirligig digital counter machine.
OOoops !! Slight problem there Brian. Gizmo works great on lab audio oscillator signals, but the tape signals, are so bloody noisy, the digital counters are triggering on everything and anything; and to the best of my knowledge, that contraption, never ever extracted one binary digit of information from either sputnik, or project rear guard, when they finally got one to not blow up on the launch pad.
In 2011 March, I had the pleasure of having lunch with retired Professor Emeritus Brian Earnshaw, at the Faculty Lounge, at the UofA. Without his teaching in electronics, I could never have started my career in industry in the USA in 1961.
george e. smith says:
September 19, 2013 at 11:27 am
“…looking at sputnik on the radio.”
What a great line.
Jeff Alberts explains to Pippen:
“You really think a 5 day forecast works pretty nicely? You have REALLY low standards. 5 day forecasts are fairly useless.”
Yet they are not nearly as useless as GCMs, which have all been totally wrong. Not one GCM predicted the past seventeen years’ lack of global warming. But Pippen still cannot bring himself to admit that computer climate models are one massive FAIL. Pippen displays cognitive dissonance in action.
Pippen also explains his belated cherry-picking of the stratosphere: “…that was the focus of my earlier Q, not the troposphere.”
But as I patiently explained to him, the heating of the troposphere was the endlessly repeated prediction of the alarmist cult: it was “The Fingerprint of Global Warming”.
But the troposphere did not cooperate. It did not warm as predicted. So following that failed prediction, the cooling stratosphere was substituted — another devious cherry-pick.
But as I showed, there was a one-time step cooling of the stratosphere in 1990 — hardly the result of steadily rising CO2 over a century and a half. It was merely a baseless conjecture that the cooling was caused by rising CO2.
The ‘cooling stratosphere’ was a climbdown position, that’s all. That is how all the failed climate alarmist predictions end: by moving the goal posts, and by a “Say Anything” explanation, and all based on spurious conjecture. That is not testable science, that is witch doctor pseudo-science. Pippen falls for it, because he is a closed-minded True Believer. The Scientific Method is as foreign to Pippen as a Kabuki play is to a Detroit social worker.
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Zeke H:
As I am certain you knew, I was referring to Jeremy Grantham, who pays the alarmist bills in return for getting to pretend he is a climate expert. Grantham believes that because he got lucky in the stock market, that makes him an expert on global warming. Even you would have to admit how ridiculous that is.
dbstealey says:
September 19, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Jeff Alberts explains to Pippen:
“You really think a 5 day forecast works pretty nicely? You have REALLY low standards. 5 day forecasts are fairly useless.”
Well, I’m a recreational runner (marathons mainly), and there have been numerous times when the 7 day forecast of sunny and warm for an upcoming race day turned into actual conditions being cold, windy and rainy…
Paul Vaughn said wrt ,”There is no proof in science”:
“You’d better sober up and reconsider.
You’ve drank too much of the propaganda.”
Seriously ?
Propaganda is publishing claims over and over again of having “proved” CO2 based AGW with
computer models and simulated data. Even if those models predicted accurately ahead of time 20 years of temperature anomalies, the theory would still not be “proved”, All that would need to happen for that particular theory to be relegated to the recycle bin of history is for any subsequent period NOT to verify .
Feynman, again, in a famous quote:
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
The climate experiment is ongoing and unending. It will use REAL data, not simulated,
Maybe you simply misunderstood.
The reason they detect a “human signal” so far back is that it isn’t one, and they’re talking out their flatulent posterior orifices.
g.e.s.;
Yes, it did. Sputnik had no instruments, and its beep contained no information, other than, “I’m in orbit!” That’s the one binary digit worth.