From the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology: Climate changes faster in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth, a phenomenon that is often explained by retreating snow and ice leading to more solar surface warming (positive ice-albedo-effect).
In a new study in Nature Geoscience the scientists Felix Pithan and Dr. Thorsten Mauritsen from the department “The Atmosphere in the Earth System” at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology show that this effect is only secondary. Instead, the main cause of the high Arctic climate sensitivity is a weaker temperature feedback, due to 1) the low temperatures that prevail and 2) the increasing temperatures with height trapping warming to remain near the surface. For these reasons, the Arctic warms more in a global warming due to a forcing from e.g. CO2 than other regions.
Some commentary sheds further light on this.
NoTricksZone points out that the German Newspaper, Spiegel, writes:
To balance out the radiation budget at an ambient temperature of 30°C, an increase of 0.16° is enough. However at minus 30°C, an increase of 0.31 °C would be needed, i.e. almost double, which gives Pithan und Mauritsen cause for thought. According to their calculations the lower start temperature in the Arctic is an important reason for the more rapid temperature increase in the Arctic compared to the tropics.”
They found that the surface albedo feedback is only the second main contributor to Arctic amplification, and that other contributions are substantially smaller or even oppose Arctic amplification.
This casts many of the assumptions made in earlier climate models deep into doubt. It’s back to the drawing board (again) for the modelers.
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.K8HUQkuu.dpuf
The paper:
Arctic amplification dominated by temperature feedbacks in contemporary climate models
Felix Pithan & Thorsten Mauritsen
Nature Geoscience (2014) doi:10.1038/ngeo2071 Received 25 November 2013 Accepted19 December 2013Published online 02 February 2014
Abstract:
Climate change is amplified in the Arctic region. Arctic amplification has been found in past warm1 and glacial2 periods, as well as in historical observations3, 4 and climate model experiments5, 6. Feedback effects associated with temperature, water vapour and clouds have been suggested to contribute to amplified warming in the Arctic, but the surface albedo feedback—the increase in surface absorption of solar radiation when snow and ice retreat—is often cited as the main contributor7, 8, 9, 10. However, Arctic amplification is also found in models without changes in snow and ice cover11, 12. Here we analyse climate model simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 archive to quantify the contributions of the various feedbacks. We find that in the simulations, the largest contribution to Arctic amplification comes from a temperature feedbacks: as the surface warms, more energy is radiated back to space in low latitudes, compared with the Arctic. This effect can be attributed to both the different vertical structure of the warming in high and low latitudes, and a smaller increase in emitted blackbody radiation per unit warming at colder temperatures. We find that the surface albedo feedback is the second main contributor to Arctic amplification and that other contributions are substantially smaller or even oppose Arctic amplification.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2071.html
What? Climate models aren’t accurate?
High surface albedo positive feedback around and near the Arctic Circle has been used to explain great ability of some of the Milankovitch cycles to explain surges and ebbings ofIce Age glaciations.
However, I see climate sensitivity related to this, and also the lapse rate feedback, becoming less positive as global temperature increases past typical of warmer times of the interglacial periods.
No, total land area was about the same. Not exactly the same, but close.
What was different are two very, very important items: The LOCATION of the major land masses was very close to the equator, gathered all into one (or only few) very large land masses surrounded by un-impeded wide oceans . And two, about 33-30 million years ago, the now-very-wide-spread continents re-collided with other into “clumps” that BLOCKED middle ocean circulation: The isthmus of Panama closed, the Cape Horn currents around Antarctica were “opened” into a single continuous circular flow that cut off more than half of the southern land mass from ANY heat flow, and the Africa-India-Suez rifts and mountains came together so the Med Sea, Black Sea, Indian Ocean, Malaysia-Australia currents were altered. Suddenly (geographically speaking) the Pacific ocean was split off from the Atlantic, the Atlantic became “divided” by the Coriolis circulation into north-half/south-half currents, western Europe could begin warming and cooling due to the Gulf Stream, Siberia got colder, etc.
The result of the two is what you noticed.
Justify your assumption of this “high surface albedo feedback” – It just isn’t there, and (during the latter part of the melt season in the Arctic is completely opposite in today’s real (non-model) world: Arctic sea ice melting creates more heat losses fro the open ocean than are gained from the sunlight.
It seems that this back and forth discussion is a parsing of words. Can the post logically suggest the models need to be reworked based on the content of the article being presented? Sure. Because it begs the question.
The modelers thought that modeled albedo affects would cause Arctic temperature outputs to change accordingly and is the real reason for actual Arctic ice conditions. Does the modeled albedo input accurately cause the output? If the answer is no, which appears to be the case, are the models in need of reworking? The models need to be reworked if the modelers continue to believe that albedo is the real mechanism for temperature changes.
If, on the other hand, the modelers are saying that something else is happening in the models that may point to another plausible mechanism, the models need to be investigated, not reworked, to determine what in the models is the actual trigger for temperature change outputs.
But then that begs the next question.
Is it possible for current un-reworked models to prove the real mechanism?
Patrick wrote –
“So, enough of your drive by shootings please. Since you have a proposition, an hypothesis, then it is time for you to write it up as a paper and submit it to a journal (physics or astronomical?) or even a blog such as this. Then be prepared to have it torn apart looking for errors.”
Torn apart indeed !. Genuine climate researchers are unlikely to be caught up in the carbon dioxide fuss and can explore planetary climate in such a way that it becomes an enjoyable visual exercise rather than the voodoo and bluffing that currently surrounds this terrestrial science. By introducing a second surface rotation arising from the orbital behavior of the Earth,the heat is taken out of the current assertion binge and I assume it would attract genuine investigators who are not afraid to begin from scratch.
In the era of satellites and human exploration of space to be still stuck with a ’tilting’ Earth in order to avoid the second surface rotation is simply ridiculous,even if it is initially difficult to ascertain that second surface rotation but certainly the polar day/night cycle makes it easy enough to spot.
Teaching children about the second surface rotation is a breeze. Give them a broom to represent the way the Earth constantly points in the same direction in space as it orbits the Sun and ask them to walk (orbit) a central object (Sun) while keeping the broom handle at roughly 23 1/2 degrees from the line of their body and pointing at the same external point at all times. The line of their body represents the ecliptic axis and they will enjoy the experience of walking forwards,sideways,backwards and then forwards again in order to keep the same orientation of the broom handle and come to understand that all sides of their bodies face the central Sun at different points as they walk/orbit around the object. Of course daily rotation is subtracted from this single orbital rotation in this analogy as the focus is on how a planet behaves as it orbits the Sun –
http://londonastronomer.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/uranus_2001-2007.jpg
So have you got that there Patrick, we could go on to discuss a global climate spectrum between zero degrees and 90 degree inclination which determines how a planet spends its heat budget across latitudes over an orbital period and why the Earth is so special in this respect. The ‘predictions’ mob try to introduce fear and doom into climate studies however the only fear I see is fear of unfamiliar concepts and the fear of appearing silly instead of being confident and comfortable with modern tools and the ability of the human mind to use them.
joeldshore:
At issue is whether there is any detectable ‘Arctic amplification’.
The measurements (i.e. data) indicate the truth of that. Imaginings of climastrologists do not.
And – as happens – the data has recently been the subject of debate here on WUWT.
Wills Eschenbach recently posted and assessed data for the satellite era as the UAH Lower Troposphere Temperature by zonal bands. His article has the title “Should We Be Worried?” and is here. He presents the data graphically and correctly says of the Arctic
That is NOT discernible Arctic amplification.
But the anonymous pop-up claimed operating as Windchasers claimed but did NOT “show”
then cited GISS and C0nn0lley’s wicki.
GISS smears data over 1000 km, and has been ‘adjusted’ beyond belief: it is a joke; see this. C0nn0lley is notorious for misusing his wicki editorial rights by censoring anything on wicki which does not scare-monger about AGW.
It is NOT ‘cherry picking‘ to reject what wicki says and to reject the fabricated GISS data in favour of the UAH data which is real data obtained by real scientists.
THERE IS NO DISCERNIBLE ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION.
Your flaming is an intended diversion from that issue. It can be laughed at – and otherwise ignored – because as you have often demonstrated you have no idea what real science is and Windchasers is merely some anonymous pop-up.
Anyway, measurements and not “real scientists” provide real-world data.
Richard
Windchasers and joeldshore:
You each provided the Red Herring of your untrue claim that there is discernible Arctic amplification.
I have rebutted your falsehood in my post at February 4, 2014 at 1:44 am.
So, my having disposed of your diversion, please now address the point I made.
At February 3, 2014 at 2:13 pm in this post I wrote
That is the issue which C0nn0lley tried to dispute, Windchasers tried to pretend does not exist, and joeldshore tried to hide with flaming and a Red Herring.
Please now address the issue.
Richard
Patrick wrote –
“If it holds up then good for you and the world. If you haven’t the courage to do it, well then you will be seen as no more than a troll. Do you want that?”
Watts had written something similar to that a while ago but what can be said of people who only know themselves by who they hate just as the opposing side does. Peer review is fine as long as you know it is there to maintain the reputation and salaries of those doing the reviewing and is easily discounted as a method of transmission of insights so that leaves the informal approach of a forum,preferably unmoderated or lightly moderated, to bring genuine insights to the front.
Given that this forum can’t read a daily temperature graph which shows the massive response of temperatures to one rotation of the Earth each and every 24 hour cycle in order to hype a stupid late 17th century conclusion which they don’t even use anymore,how much regard do you think I have for the voodoo and bluff on either side of the carbon dioxide fuss ?.
Grow up the lot of you and when you reach the ‘high’ standard of interpreting the rotation of the Earth out of a temperature graph then get back to me but not before then –
http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/los-angeles/hourly
The modeling cult ,including the bunch that inhabits this forum ,can’t manage that much as shown in their statements –
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
The Arctic is supposed to react first to global warming. How would we know since actual temperatures are few and far between there, we have no real data only model runs which are synthetic and generally wrong.
@Gkell1
Okay, you responded to me quite nicely in 2 posts. Firstly, when I say “Then be prepared to have it torn apart looking for errors.” I mean that in a positive way. Remove errors and then we have what is the truth to us at our current level of understanding. Of course the goal is to add to our level of comprehension and understanding not merely reiterate.
Secondly, you managed to damn our host and the rest of the WUWT community: “Watts had written something similar to that a while ago but what can be said of people who only know themselves by who they hate just as the opposing side does. ” and “Given that this forum can’t read a daily temperature graph which shows …”.
I’ve met Anthony and he came across as a caring and genuine person – not someone who defines himself through hatred. I think anyone here can read a daily temperature chart, eg your “hourlies”. Indeed, an observation from many over a course of years has been that considering the large swing of temperatures over a daily period for most geographic sites, how or why does a small “temperature anomaly” of under 1 deg C make any significant difference to say the ability of any particular environment to deal with the change.
Look, you have a story to tell. Stop mucking about, stop annoying others, stop upsetting yourself. Write it up. If you believe it has value to educate and to either correct current misconceptions or add new knowledge – then flipping well do it. Stop making whiny excuses that no one will understand or that peer reviewers are in it just for the money or that everyone hates you. You cannot tell what is in the hearts and minds of others so any of these excuses, which you say motivates others, is in reality an echo of your own mind.
Patrick wrote –
. “I think anyone here can read a daily temperature chart, eg your “hourlies”.”
Not a single one of you can extract the cause of the daily temperature fluctuations within a 24 hour period as our planet turns once in that period and remains in step, after all, the dumbest people ever to set foot on the planet assert otherwise –
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/los-angeles/hourly
No wonder you have so much trouble with the polar day/night cycle and sea ice fluctuations across an orbital period due to second surface rotation because if you cannot account for the massive temperature fluctuations daily then there isn’t a chance you have a grip on climate studies.
I once met a person who said he knew what nation he came from by virtue that he hated a person from another nation and that is how this carbon dioxide business has evolved .Of course when you can’t handle cause and effect at the most immediate experience of temperature fluctuations then what do I care whether a person is nice or not because the inability to handle the correlation between one rotation and all the effects within a 24 hour cycle is in a region of intellectual oblivion.
richardscourtney says, February 4, 2014 at 1:44 am:
“Wills Eschenbach recently posted and assessed data for the satellite era as the UAH Lower Troposphere Temperature by zonal bands. His article has the title “Should We Be Worried?” and is here. He presents the data graphically and correctly says of the Arctic
Now, that leaves the 4% of the planet north of the Arctic Circle. It cooled slightly over the first decade and a half. Then it warmed for a decade, and it has stayed even for a decade
That is NOT discernible Arctic amplification.“
That seems indeed to be true and very interesting (the RSS data BTW shows the exact same thing), because it clearly shows that the Arctic does not follow the evident ‘two-steps-up’ (one post 1987 and one post 1997) evolution in global temperatures that we’ve seen since 1978/79. Instead the Arctic quite clearly suddenly responded to something in 1995, almost like a heat gate opening, and then stabilising again after the peak in early 2005. One decade of massive warming (about one degree in the lower troposphere) and that’s it.
It’s hard to justify this as being just a slavish amplifying response of global temperature rise, I agree.
So what happened in 1995?
REPLY: It’s an opinion. much like many of your Wikipedia entries – Anthony
*********************************
BOOM!!
that answer rocked 🙂
Also, like B. Tisdale has shown before, the OHC of the northern part of our globe follows much the same peculiar pattern:
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r565/Keyell/inodc_heat700_0-360E_90-60N_na_zps767d194a.png
Nothing of significance seems to be happening until around 1995, when the OHC suddenly surges up for about a decade. And that’s it. (Caveat added: data quality and coverage.)
How does this square with the NASA / University of Irvine study (and the 2 folowups) that attribute a (very) large chunk of both temperature increase and loss of ice integrity to a 3% reduction of albedo resulting from increasing soot, mostly from China?
That would also explain the increase in ice loss since 2001 despite the stall in warming. It would also explain why the melt increase is occurring primarily during summer despite the fact that DMI shows the summer temperature trend from ‘way, ‘way back to be flat as Tokyo after a cheap monster movie.
Or else, the explanation above might pertain, and the delay in melt is mere lag, as is typical when it comes to ice and oceans?
90-65N 1980-2014 according to HadCRUt4:
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r565/Keyell/hadcrut4_0-360E_90-65N_n_1980-2014a_zps84c9704b.png
Two abrupt and big jumps in mean temperature level, one in 1994>95 and one in 2004>05. Otherwise, basically nothing …
Kristian says:
“So what happened in 1995?”
An increase in negative NAO and AO episodes:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/month_nao_index.shtml
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/month_ao_index.shtml
at a decline in solar plasma velocity:
http://snag.gy/nf9SK.jpg
suggesting that Arctic and AMO warming from 1995 and again from 2005 are a feedback from declines in solar forcing.
Windchasers says:
February 3, 2014 at 2:24 pm
“That’s definitely not right. We are observing polar amplification: about 3x the average so far. ”
The GISS graphic you link to shows most of the Antarctic completely refusing to warm. So while more or less uniformly distributed CO2 leads to a terrible north-polar amplification it has no effect at all on the south pole.
Now that’s one funny enhanced greenhouse effect.
RichardSCourtney says:
Are ya kidding? Look again at the chart Willis posted:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/uah-lower-troposphere-temperature.jpg
The increase in temperature across these charts, from 1980 to now is plainly greater for the Arctic than for the tropics. Eyeballing it (meaning, estimating very roughly), it looks like ~1.5 degrees for the Arctic vs <0.5 degrees for the next three areas.
Re: the GISS chart, remember that they're comparing the 2000-2009 period to a 1951-1980 baseline. Your complaints with GISS aside, I'll be surprised if you can show me any temperature series that doesn’t show arctic amplification over that time period.
DirkH says:
Dirk, I recommend you read the paper being discussed again. The polar amplification isn’t believed to come mainly from an enhanced GHG effect, but from heat flows from the tropics and from change in surface albedo due to melting ice.
I’m sure extra CO2/water would also matter, particularly since the Antarctic is so dry, but IIUC, they just don’t matter as much as other mechanisms.
But, yeah: because of how the continents / ocean basins are shaped, ocean currents can carry warm water can much farther north towards the Arctic than south towards the Antarctic. The Antarctic basically has an ocean current flowing around it that more or less blocks off most of the warm water flows from the tropics, quite the opposite of the Arctic. This means that the Arctic will warm a lot faster than the Antarctic.
Incidentally, before 40 million years ago, the Drake Passage – the space between S. American and Antarctica – wasn’t open yet. This means Antarctica wasn’t split off as it is now, with its own ocean currents that interacted minimally with the rest of the world. And it also means that the ocean currents would have brought warm water from the tropics to the South Pole. The climate would have been very different.
Basically, given how much ocean currents control the climate, and the shape of the continents shape the ocean currents, we can’t say jack s**t about how CO2 and the climate interacted more than a few million years ago. Just something to keep in mind, generally, when talking about paleoclimate. There are good reasons to ignore the far, far past, and not just because our data from back then is crap.
Windchasers said
“The increase in temperature across these charts, from 1980 to now is plainly greater for the Arctic than for the tropics.”
The Arctic was cooling up to 1994, so much for Arctic amplification. The step up from 1995 is not an amplification of any warming, it’s a negative feedback (-ve NOA/AO) to a drop in solar forcing which then caused a regional warming because of its overshoot.
DirkH says:
Actually, even the climate models of Manabe et al. (1991) from 20 years ago predicted that transient response would be amplified much more in the Arctic than in the Antarctic [see Fig. 12(a) of that paper here: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%281991%29004%3C0785%3ATROACO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Ulric says:
If you look at that chart again, you’ll find that the Arctic was about flat from 1980-1994, and particularly so within the range of variability. I seriously doubt that there’s any statistically significant cooling trend.
In reality, it’s plain that temperatures in the Arctic are more variable than the global average (just as with most regions), and to account for that, we should look at the long-term trends. And if you do that, the Arctic amplification pops out, nice and clear, warming about 3x as faster as the rest of the world.
Friends:
My 24 hour time-out has ended so I write to reply to the silly arguments by Windchasers and joeldshore. Their arguments amount to ‘Evidence, I don’t need no steenkin’ evidence’.
The issue is that the egregious William C0nn0lley claimed our host had fabricated the claim that the paper (reported in the above article) indicates climate models require revision. I pointed out that C0nn0lley was wrong: reality shows no polar amplification but the paper discusses mechanisms of polar amplification in the models. Modelled mechanisms of an effect which is not observed in reality is an error in the models.
Windchasers asserted that polar amplification consists of warming in polar regions – in this case, the Arctic – being 3x more than elsewhere and that it does exist.
The – as always, obnoxious and astonishingly ignorant – joeldshore jumped in with a post that claimed “real scientists” had measured the polar amplification and anybody who says otherwise is not a “real scientist”.
I pointed out that no such polar amplification is observed to exist. The purported evidence for it is false. It consists of what C0nn0lley’s doctored wicki says and Hansen’s fabricated GISS data. In reality the UAH Lower Troposphere Temperature shows no such polar amplification.
Kristian wrote to say that the RSS data shows the same as I described; i.e. two periods of no discernible temperature rise separated by a period of slight rise which is not consistent with polar amplification, saying of my observation
Some discussion of why this ensued and centred around NAO/PDO, not polar amplification.
DirkH pointed out that there is definitely no polar amplification in the Antarctic.
At February 4, 2014 at 10:27 am Windchasers replied with a post which defies both science and logic writing to me
The quoted reply from Windchasers is ridiculous.
1.
He has redefined his original definition of “polar amplification” from 3x the GHG global warming to a jump in temperature over a decade.
2.
He has refused to accept the clear indications that there is NO polar amplification of 3x the global warming signal provided by both the UAH data and the RSS data.
3.
And he has asked for evidence of a negative which is normally not possible but in this case was provided.
Windchasers replied to DirkH with a load of waffle about ocean currents which claims a difference between Northern and Southern polar regions. The waffle, of course, obfuscates that POLAR amplification occurs to the poleS (n.b. both of them). However, he would have had a valid point if he had said the paper being debated in this discussion only considers modelling of climate in the Arctic.
Joeldshore also replied to DirkH by pointing out that Manabe et al. (1991) had predicted more polar warming in the Arctic than the Antarctic. This, of course, is not relevant when there has been no observation of polar amplification (and, being not relevant, is typical of comments by joeldshore)
Ulric Lyons was not satisfied by the responses from Windchasers (no sensible person would be satisfied) and he wrote
Windchasers replied
That is an admission by Windchasers that there has NOT been polar amplification in the Arctic despite his assertion to the contrary.
Nobody disputes that there was global warming from “from 1980-1994”. Therefore, there should have been large warming in the Arctic region in the period “from 1980-1994”. And the Arctic warming should have been very large over that period if polar amplification exists and is “warming about 3x as faster as the rest of the world”.
But Windchasers admits there was NO discernible warming in the Arctic during that period. He says of Arctic temperature “the Arctic was about flat from 1980-1994, and particularly so within the range of variability”.
The undisputed fact that there was a sudden and short duration rise in Arctic temperature starting in 1995 does NOT change the fact that global temperature was NOT seen as being ANY RISE in Arctic temperature during the period of global warming. And it requires reason to be abandoned as a method to pretend that the short duration rise represents “Arctic amplification” over the entire record which is “nice and clear, warming about 3x as faster as the rest of the world”.
In summation, the asserted polar amplification is observed to NOT exist and, therefore, the climate models do require modification because they emulate mechanisms which induce modelled output of polar amplification which does not exist in reality.
So, our host was right and William C0nn0lley was wrong, which should surprise nobody.
Richard