Cloud cover is a major forcing, and uncertain, say researchers from the Hebrew University, US and Australia
Jerusalem, Jan. 26, 2014 – The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? That is an issue on which science is making progress, but the answers are still far from exact, say researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the US and Australia who have studied the issue and whose work which has just appeared in the journal Science.
Indeed, one could say that the picture is a “cloudy” one, since the determination of the greenhouse gas effect involves multifaceted interactions with cloud cover.
To some extent, aerosols –- particles that float in the air caused by dust or pollution, including greenhouse gases – counteract part of the harming effects of climate warming by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected from clouds back into space. However, the ways in which these aerosols affect climate through their interaction with clouds are complex and incompletely captured by climate models, say the researchers. As a result, the radiative forcing (that is, the disturbance to the earth’s “energy budget” from the sun) caused by human activities is highly uncertain, making it difficult to predict the extent of global warming.
And while advances have led to a more detailed understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate, further progress is hampered by limited observational capabilities and coarse climate models, says Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of the article in Science. Rosenfeld wrote this article in cooperation with Dr. Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Dr. Robert Wood of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. Leo Donner of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. .
Their recent studies have revealed a much more complicated picture of aerosol-cloud interactions than considered previously. Depending on the meteorological circumstances, aerosols can have dramatic effects of either increasing or decreasing the cloud sun-deflecting effect, the researchers say. Furthermore, little is known about the unperturbed aerosol level that existed in the preindustrial era. This reference level is very important for estimating the radiative forcing from aerosols.
Also needing further clarification is the response of the cloud cover and organization to the loss of water by rainfall. Understanding of the formation of ice and its interactions with liquid droplets is even more limited, mainly due to poor ability to measure the ice-nucleating activity of aerosols and the subsequent ice-forming processes in clouds.
Explicit computer simulations of these processes even at the scale of a whole cloud or multi-cloud system, let alone that of the planet, require hundreds of hours on the most powerful computers available. Therefore, a sufficiently accurate simulation of these processes at a global scale is still impractical.
Recently, however, researchers have been able to create groundbreaking simulations in which models were formulated presenting simplified schemes of cloud-aerosol interactions, This approach offers the potential for model runs that resolve clouds on a global scale for time scales up to several years, but climate simulations on a scale of a century are still not feasible. The model is also too coarse to resolve many of the fundamental aerosol-cloud processes at the scales on which they actually occur. Improved observational tests are essential for validating the results of simulations and ensuring that modeling developments are on the right track, say the researchers.
While it is unfortunate that further progress on understanding aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate is limited by inadequate observational tools and models, achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested. The level of effort, they say, should match the socioeconomic importance of what the results could provide: lower uncertainty in measuring man-made climate forcing and better understanding and predictions of future impacts of aerosols on our weather and climate.
Susie says: @ur momisugly January 27, 2014 at 12:59 pm
I notice Sherwood is a co-author. Only a few weeks ago he was saying that climate sensitivity was 4 degrees based on his work on how clouds are formed. Now he is saying clouds are uncertain.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nice catch.
I haven’t seen any WUWT comment on this:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/#comments
Seems the guy might know something.
george e. smith says: @ur momisugly January 27, 2014 at 1:29 pm
So these are pseudo scientists looking for more grant money – Got it.
Thanks
Old’un wrote –
“This a particularly apt reference, as Blake, though not an atheist, was apalled by the power of organised religion. Some scholars believe that his reference to dark satanic mills relates to the spires of Oxford University where much of the hierachy of the Anglican church was educated and was its seat of academic power.”
Here is what Blake actually said –
“I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace.”
Jerusalem
The clockwork solar system which was modeled out of timekeeping averages plus a lot of bluff and voodoo and indeed they were cruel works. As they hadn’t a clue what Sir Isaac’s absolute/relative time,space and motion represented they let their imaginations run wild a century ago and buried humanity deeper in that unfortunate celestial sphere system.
Blake’s picture is of a man so entranced with models on paper that he and his followers forget to breath the air of creation as a wondrous spectacle or have I got the wrong crowd here ?
http://pavlopoulos.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/william-blake-newton.jpg
“Now I a fourfold vision see And a fourfold vision is given to me Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And three fold in soft Beulahs night And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newtons sleep.” Blake
The main point that I get from this article is that there is a real need for more grant money, and ‘we need it now’. The socioeconomic importance cannot be overstated, or understated. Actually, the ‘importance’ isn’t really well understood yet, but there is a model being developed to answer that particular question. In the meantime, clouds are blithely sailing through the skies in an audacious fashion, floating hither and thither irreverently.
…The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? …
Sir! Sir! I know the answer!
“The science is settled. It will create dangerous warming all over the US, and the UK will have no rain any more.”
Do I get a prize now?
Mosher should read the 10 commandments of rational argument
1. Thou shall not attack a person’s character but the argument itself. (“Ad hominem”)
2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make it easier to attack. (“Straw Man Fallacy)
3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (“Hasty Generalization”)
4. Thou shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (“Begging the Question”)
5. Thou shall not claim that because you believe in something it must be the cause. (“Post Hoc/False Claim”)
6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (“Fake Dichotomy”)
7. Thou shall not argue that because of our ignorance that the claim must be true or false. (“Ad Ignorantiam”)
8. Thou shall not lay the burden of proof onto him who is questioning the claim. (“Burden of Proof Reversal”)
9. Thou shall not assume “this” follows “that” when “it” has no logical connection. (“Non Sequitor”)
10. Thou shall not claim that because a premises is popular, therefore, it must be true. (“Bandwagon Fallacy”)”
“The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given”. It’s the sun that warms, not a cold gas.
+1 for Mike Borgelt’s comment.
“the required improvement … provided that the financial resources are invested”
Almost all public statements by both real and pseudo-scientists translate as “Gimme da money!”
OK Mosher, of what use are these models to predict future TEMPERATURES if they cannot model CLOUDS which heavily affect TEMPERATURES? You sir are the world champion of obfuscation, is your mother proud of you?
The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence?
I have to pile on. (Anymoose, H2O ruins stuff too, Bob Weber, Dodgy Geezer, phillipbratby all beat me to it.)
This sentence says that we
1. know the warming effect of greenhouse gasses,
2. that we know the human-induced part of GHGs
3. The GHG warming effect is “given”, ergo history and today are explained. (No mention of The Pause.)
4. It is the future that is uncertain.
They want us to believe that as of today CO2 is magically going to change its GW properties.
It takes talent to turn off a reader in the first two dozen words.
Not to mention that, in order to validate a 100 years run model, you have to wait… er… 100 years.
Quackitists and quackademics……..if the earth was a greenhouse there would be no life on this planet. It is a convection system of incomprehensible complexity.
Steven Mosher says;
Your analogy falls way short. How a car or an airplane may perform in the real world is well understood, and not particularly complicated when compared to the Earth’s climate. If Boeing built an airplane solely with computer modeling (and they have ) but on the first flight it crashed and killed the crew, they would not do it again and then tell the next crew, “Not to worry, we’ve got it right this time.”
I agree with you that people should try, and I applaud those who do, but when you fail over and over, don’t try and sell your predictions as fact.
The technological reach the authors are talking about is computer hardware related, when referencing the models. The best chip technology today is by Samsung with their 20nm process node technology. A close second is Intel with their 21 nm and sometime later this year their 14nm.
It is becoming much more expensive to continue this reduction in process node technology, so much so that an individual company might not be able to get enough revenue from sales to afford to put into manufacturing the next size reduction.
A switch is required to extreme ultra violet technology, requiring new tools, for the development of continued reduction in size. Intel’s road map has 7nm scheduled for 2017 and 5nm for 2019.
Exascale computing has two major obstacles to overcome:
Memory: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/14/intel_exascale_update_deepdive/
And interconnect: … http://insidehpc.com/2013/11/15/doe-awards-25-4-million-exascale-interconnect-design/
Last year Samsung invested 20 Billion in upgrades to their manufacturing capability and future capability, Intel somewhere around 11 Billion,
Might anyone react to this post at Real-Science:
IR Expert Speaks Out After 40 Years Of Silence : “IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2″
Mike Sanicola says:
I’m a professional infrared astronomer who spent his life trying to observe space through the atmosphere’s back-radiation that the environmental activists claim is caused by CO2 and guess what? In all the bands that are responsible for back radiation in the brightness temperatures (color temperatures) related to earth’s surface temperature (between 9 microns and 13 microns for temps of 220K to 320 K) there is no absorption of radiation by CO2 at all. In all the bands between 9 and 9.5 there is mild absorption by H2O, from 9.5 to 10 microns (300 K) the atmosphere is perfectly clear except around 9.6 is a big ozone band that the warmists never mention for some reason. From 10 to 13 microns there is more absorption by H2O. Starting at 13 we get CO2 absorption but that wavelength corresponds to temperatures below even that of the south pole. Nowhere from 9 to 13 microns do we see appreciable absorption bands of CO2. This means the greenhouse effect is way over 95% caused by water vapor and probably less than 3% from CO2. I would say even ozone is more important due to the 9.6 band, but it’s so high in the atmosphere that it probably serves more to radiate heat into space than for back-radiation to the surface. The whole theory of a CO2 greenhouse effect is wrong yet the ignorant masses in academia have gone to great lengths trying to prove it with one lie and false study after another, mainly because the people pushing the global warming hoax are funded by the government who needs to report what it does to the IPCC to further their “cause”. I’m retired so I don’t need to keep my mouth shut anymore. Kept my mouth shut for 40 years, now I will tell you, not one single IR astronomer gives a rats arse about CO2. Just to let you know how stupid the global warming activists are, I’ve been to the south pole 3 times and even there, where the water vapor is under 0.2 mm precipitable, it’s still the H2O that is the main concern in our field and nobody even talks about CO2 because CO2 doesn’t absorb or radiate in the portion of the spectrum corresponding with earth’s surface temps of 220 to 320 K. Not at all. Therefore, for Earth as a black body radiator IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/
I thought it was the most compelling argument against a significant role of CO2 I’ve seen so far. Any ideas?
@Mosher
“by assuming that you have to model everything to have a model that is useful to someone for some purpose.”
The fact that water vapour feedback is a major contributor to warming; more significant than the initial CO2 contribution, you don’t think that qualifies? Seriously?
wanting more funding fits with the latest meme, which CAGW-infested Bloomberg continues to build:
27 Jan: Bloomberg: Barry Ritholtz: Global Warming Battle Is Over Market Share, Not Science
Last week, the New York Times reported that venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average component Coca-Cola Co. was awakening to the impact of climate change on its business…
Global warming, according to the article, is being seen “as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk.”
This debate is no longer about whether global warming is real (it is) or whether humans are the most likely cause (you are), but rather, some very interesting and different questions that might be more professionally relevant to finance: How is this going to affect business? What are the investing consequences? Who will be the financial winners and losers of climate change?…
Investors should be considering this as a fight over market share, not a scientific debate. That is the approach taken by McKenzie Funk in a new book, “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming.” The impact is across many industries. It’s time to throw out your preconceptions of climate change as a fight between green hippies and Big Oil….
The culturally constructed ignorance known as “agnotology” has been driven primarily by the oil and coal industries. Funk argues that we are about to move beyond that faux debate to a more important battle between even larger interests. Consider:
Insurers stand to make larger payouts because of more severe weather and more frequent natural disasters. However, this will inevitably lead to appreciable higher insurance premiums and potentially rising profits.
The travel and hotel industry is facing specific challenges. Ski resorts that were in prime snow making areas may find themselves no longer ideally located; warm weather destinations boasting access to reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving have troubles as reefs die out…
My perspective on global warming is different than some. As a car and boat enthusiast, the various gasoline-powered vehicles I own crank out a few thousand horsepower and generate a not-insignificant amount of pollution. However, I don’t pretend climate change is a hoax or that it won’t matter in the future. So long as creating pollution is cheap and legal, we won’t see many people changing personal behavior. The most likely fix for this is some form of a carbon tax.
But the bigger issue is the financial consequences. Investors are going to see companies increasingly affected by climate change. For those of you who still are fighting the science — sorry to tell you, the debate has moved on…
Too many people have had their heads in the sand. It is time to start making some decisions based on possible investing outcomes, not pseudo-science. To those who figure this out, a green fortune awaits — in both senses of the word.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/global-warming-battle-is-over-market-share-not-science.html
Anymoose says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:32 pm
These guys lose me in their first sentence: “The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given…………” Do they actually think that one molecule of CO2 out of 2,500 molecules of air makes any difference? And man was responsible for 3-4% of that one molecule! They are barking up the wrong tree.
And if my arithmetic is right that means one in every 62,500 molecules is man contributed.
Anthony watts & al
This is rather the way I like it and where I may be able to contribute.
“But…. what about the clouds?” was my first and spontaneous question and objection, when I stumbled over the climate research institute at the university festival in Oslo.
It being cloudy and foggy…. yes indeed!
And “the clouds” is further a fameous greek comedy.
I was able to ruin Svensmarks CLOUD efforts in CERN quite easily by reconstructing John William Herschels Blueprint- Cyanotypie- method for the study of shortwave- light, and by knowing that (NH4)2SO4 is not hygroscopic, whereas the system SO3 .nH2O is a quite severely hygroscopic system giving acid rains.
But, Goodnight, it is 0025 here.
Grrrrrr. Can I say that these esteemed climate scientists don’t know WTF is going on? I know science advances through curiosity, falsification, repeatability etc. but climate science is so complicated that no one can tell me with (an honest) 90% confidence how warm the Earth’s surface will be in 2100. Yet the IPCC has made its pronouncements since AR1 in 1990!!!!!!!!!!!
Discoveries and research is fine but didn’t the IPCC jump the gun????? See surface temperature standstill for 16 years and counting. See projections V observations. This is crap.
Clarification.
I mean all climate scientists, not just the ones who wrote THIS paper.
The opening editorial line:
The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence?
suggests a graduated back-tracking is under way.
“Hey, we were not exactly right but we are learning” … leading to “we worked under the best scientific evidence available at the time. Yes, we were wrong but admit it as we have learnt more”.
and the politicos:
“We followed policies mandated by the best scientific information in the world, at the time”
Jimbo, and everyone are reproducing a terrible spelling mistake, on a par with the misuse of the semi-colon:
It is CRIMATOLOGY, not climatology.