From the University of Cambridge
Many of the complex computer models which are used to predict climate change could be missing an important ozone ‘feedback’ factor in their calculations of future global warming, according to new research led by the University of Cambridge and published today (1 December) in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Computer models play a crucial role in informing climate policy. They are used to assess the effect that carbon emissions have had on the Earth’s climate to date, and to predict possible pathways for the future of our climate.
Increasing computing power combined with increasing scientific knowledge has led to major advances in our understanding of the climate system during the past decades. However, the Earth’s inherent complexity, and the still limited computational power available, means that not every variable can be included in current models. Consequently, scientists have to make informed choices in order to build models which are fit for purpose.
“These models are the only tools we have in terms of predicting the future impacts of climate change, so it’s crucial that they are as accurate and as thorough as we can make them,” said the paper’s lead author Peer Nowack, a PhD student in the Centre for Atmospheric Science, part of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry.
The new research has highlighted a key role that ozone, a major component of the stratosphere, plays in how climate change occurs, and the possible implications for predictions of global warming. Changes in ozone are often either not included, or are included a very simplified manner, in current climate models. This is due to the complexity and the sheer computational power it takes to calculate these changes, an important deficiency in some studies.
In addition to its role in protecting the Earth from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, ozone is also a greenhouse gas. The ozone layer is part of a vast chemical network, and changes in environmental conditions, such as changes in temperature or the atmospheric circulation, result in changes in ozone abundance. This process is known as an atmospheric chemical feedback.
Using a comprehensive atmosphere-ocean chemistry-climate model, the Cambridge team, working with researchers from the University of East Anglia, the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, the Met Office and the University of Reading, compared ozone at pre-industrial levels with how it evolves in response to a quadrupling of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is a standard climate change experiment.
What they discovered is a reduction in global surface warming of approximately 20% – equating to 1° Celsius – when compared with most models after 75 years. This difference is due to ozone changes in the lower stratosphere in the tropics, which are mainly caused by changes in the atmospheric circulation under climate change.
“This research has shown that ozone feedback can play a major role in global warming and that it should be included consistently in climate models,” said Nowack. “These models are incredibly complex, just as the Earth is, and there are an almost infinite number of different processes which we could include. Many different processes have to be simplified in order to make them run effectively within the model, but what this research shows is that ozone feedback plays a major role in climate change, and therefore should be included in models in order to make them as accurate as we can make them. However, this particular feedback is especially complex since it depends on many other climate processes that models still simulate differently. Therefore, the best option to represent this feedback consistently might be to calculate ozone changes in every model, in spite of the high computational costs of such a procedure.
“Climate change research is all about having the best data possible. Every climate model currently in use shows that warming is occurring and will continue to occur, but the difference is in how and when they predict warming will happen. Having the best models possible will help make the best climate policy.”
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Has anyone looked inside the ozone hole for the missing heat?
I, for one, fully believe these model results truly represent the situation. I have complete faith in these simulations.
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Okay, those are ridiculous statements, but that is exactly the point. There are many people who feel this way.
Why would we place any trust at all in these particular model results (or any of them for that matter).
There is this theory about how additional GHGs will make the Earth warmer. Then it is going to have positive feedbacks which effectively triples the initial response. People can model that or not model that or whatever.
But you have to believe in the theory first or put all your faith in model results reinforcing your initial belief system or use a strawman excuse that just because some of the model results are “useful”, then there something “good” about the bulk of the rest of them. It is not logical or something that can be proven, it is just a belief.
We are just wasting society’s resources supporting these projects. Just call it using wasting society’s resources to support someone’s personal belief systems. Because that is all it is.
Its time for actual proof and not more model results. Put the money into actually measuring the climate system properly. Satellites, replacing the people at the NCDC, truth commissions to sort out the non-factual claims.
$365 billion spent on climate research and green energy buys a lot of groceries and Ebola research. What a waste.
Here they do the experiments , and as it turns out AIR is the problem climate science neglects .
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=0hzDN81ei5cC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=atmospheric+heat+electrons+and+microwaves&source=bl&ots=cLRLKS7Wsq&sig=1yhQcbzhihVjII2TrivMfcVTIio&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8LhjVPSdJqXLmwXAg4CABw&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=atmospheric%20heat%20electrons%20and%20microwaves&f=false
True enough. And mission-critical informed choices were not, and are not, good enough to render the models fit for purpose.
And a lot of people have known that from the outset.
“Climate change research is all about having the best data possible. ”
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and yet nothing in this release discusses measured Data.
What is going to be worse is when they have computer models that come in for a landing on the observed temperature trace (let’s assume for a moment that they aren’t fiddling the record daily). These will be add on improvements to the FIXED CO2 sensitivity and these agents will be worse than CO2, for if they are not, the game is over. So we will finally have computer models that will follow the temperature record but be completely divorced from reality. They’ve tried this with aerosols to save the precious Holy Grail of all powerful CO2 without sufficient success. They won’t let this go (orders from Maurice Strong and his zealots – they want to shut down civilization building fossil fuels).
Ozone and other “parameters” will follow to moderate the warming but will be toxic to the Nevada snail darter or some such. Theoretically, with flight of fancy already a tradition in climate science, there are no barriers to infinite numbers of models that work but are totally a crock. Why must we believe that a model that does predict the climate (useful as this would be) is also a faithful indication of how it actually works. Look at the dozens of curve fitting exercises using different dosages of a variety of variables that essentially “work” for hind casting – diverse agencies like perturbations of the sun caused by planets, plus a potage of magnetism, ocean currents, and a hundred others. Imagine if climate scientists had discovered such a potion in 1910. We would, indeed think it a marvel and would be happily correcting solid data to fit the Model. Peopling truncate proxies that diverge and decline would be given no second thought. There would be courses on it. The MWP and the LIA would be long gone. Revised interpretations of ice cores would be de rigueur …. The pause would be corrected….
It was only a matter of time before the ozone “scientists” got on to the AGW funding band wagon.
I like the
“Consequently, scientists have to make informed choices in order to build models which are fit for purpose.”
In other words they use their own preference which translates to their model.
To quote Proff. James Lovelock of the Gaia hypothesis which he subsequently distanced himself from. Lovelock invented a number of instruments in the 1970’s for space research including ozone concentrations. Consequently he was heavily involved with the whole Ozone Hole affair in the late 1980’s;
Here he is quoted in his reaction to the Climate Gate e-mail debacle.
Taken from IceCap;although I have read this in other sources also;
‘”Ozone hole’ shenanigans were the warm-up act for ‘Global Warming’”
[ http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/ozone_hole_hoax_was_the_preview_for_global_warming/ ]
“James Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the leaked CRU emails in late 2009 was one of a true scientist
. “I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science.
I have seen this happen before, of course.
We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.
Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.”
“Using a comprehensive atmosphere-ocean chemistry-climate model…”
So they didn’t actually do any empirical science. They built a model. Has it been tested? Silly question I guess.
I gather from this that the Earth’s climate is incredibly complex and in this complex system modellers have left out Ozone which plays a major role in the global warming predictions.
How inconvenient for this to come out just when the science was settled and we were 97% certain about the predictions.
However maybe we can rest assured that its only Ozone they have left out and the Sun, clouds and the Galaxy we float in has been fully accounted for. They must be relatively simple systems.
I recall reading years ago that in Victorian England the leisure class used to run around in the woods with butterfly nets trying to capture ozone. The modern debate about catastrophic manmade global warming shows similar intellectual rigor. 🙂
All this talk about the sensitivity of Earth temperature to atmospheric CO2 (“ECS”) contradicts the observation that CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales.
This reality (CO2 LAGS Temperature) suggests that the fractious mainstream debate between Global Warming Alarmists (aka “Warmists: ECS is very high and very scary”) and Climate Skeptics (aka “Deniers: ECS is low and just not so”) ASSUMES that the future (increasing CO2) causes the past (increasing Temperature), which I suggest is extremely improbable.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 can have many causes, including fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, temperature change, etc. but it has yet to be demonstrated in the real world that ECS exists at a magnitude large enough to be discernible, and in fact ECS may not exist at all in a practical sense on this planet.
Those who suggest the future can cause the past (aka CO2 significantly drives temperature) are up against some formidable opposition:
Henry of Ockham: “Plurality must never be posited without necessity.”
Aristotle: “We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses.”
Ptolemy: “We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.”
Thomas Aquinas: “It is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many”.
Isaac Newton: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes.”
Bertrand Russell: “Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.”
Karl Popper: Our preference for simplicity may be justified by its falsifiability criterion: We prefer simpler theories to more complex ones “because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable.”
HenryWilliam of OckhamHmm.
rogerknights;
Thank you for the correction.
Wasn’t it Henry of Ockham who first stated the KISS Rule? 🙂
The temperature in the stratosphere changes due to chemical reactions under the influence of changes in solar activity.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_NH_2013.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_ALL_NH_2013.gif
Changes in the pattern of ozone in the stratosphere in winter depend on solar activity and Earth’s magnetic field.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=01&startmonth=09&startyear=2013&starttime=00%3A00&endday=02&endmonth=12&endyear=2014&endtime=23%3A30&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2014/06/magnetic_field_changes/14582172-1-eng-GB/Magnetic_field_changes_large.jpg
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Swarm_reveals_Earth_s_changing_magnetism
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_toz_nh_f00.gif
This pattern of distribution of ozone causes a severe winters in North America.
Let us see pressure and ozone in the lower stratosphere (height 15 km).
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f00.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_o3mr_100_nh_f00.gif
They’re also missing Gravity, which makes them useless because they don’t model reality.
“Every climate model currently in use shows that warming is occurring….”
Completely unbelievable. These people are completely blinded and far beyond rational thought.
There has been no global warming in this century. By the admission of several top climate scientists, the zero warming has now lasted more than long enough to disprove the climate models. And yet it seems to make no difference, these morons continue to treat the output of these jumped up Playstations as if it were real empirical scientific data.
Chris
Current waving in the stratosphere in the north.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_ALL_NH_2014.gif
The temperature gradient over the polar circle causes movement of air from the Arctic over North America.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t30_nh_f00.gif
The mathematician Tom Lehrer once said “Life is like a sewer — what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.”
The simile also holds for models.
“What they discovered is a reduction in global surface warming of approximately 20% – equating to 1° Celsius – when compared with most models after 75 years”.
“when compared to most models” tells me nothing. Turned around it tells me that most models have a failure of 1 Celsius, when compared to a model that take ozone into consideration. This is perhaps less than you get when most models are compared to observation. (at least regressed statistically for 75 years)
Great stuff there ren.
Ozone over the Antarctic extreme cold and stratosphere are (like CO2) cooling gasses.
On WUWT are the upper temperature charts show the strato temps falling and becoming drier over the years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/atmosphere-page/
On we see Antarctic air has essentially a perceptible but linear fall in temperature over the decades. ~-0.014C/decade
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_southern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
It is also modelled and shown by “WUWT” previously how CO2 absorbs latent heat and radiates from ground level below 220K at the Antarctic. SkS provides this, clearly 😉
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/spectra.gif
However, the O3 radiative frequency is below the natural ground radiation.
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r565/Keyell/SpectralCoolingRates_zps27867ef4.png
So yes, O3 does exhibit a “colour temperature” over all the Earth but it exists far below the lowest temperature to affect the atmosphere. Except where those pesky grey blobs are… not to worry, unless the UV drops off the Sun and O3 increases… oops!
Worry? Haha.
“These models are the only tools we have in terms of predicting the future impacts of climate change, so it’s crucial that they are as accurate and as thorough as we can make them,” said the paper’s lead author Peer Nowack, a PhD student in the Centre for Atmospheric Science, part of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry.
“As accurate and as thorough as we can make them” just means “we never intend to get to the truth, because there is no truth, but we will get away from a previous paradigm.” They are expert practitioners having a structured scientific revolution.
Oh my how awkward, our variable star, the variable magnetic field, and the ionizing radiation are not invited.
“These models are the only tools we have in terms of predicting the future impacts of climate change…”
Almost every incorrect theory is based on an incorrect assumption that is never questioned. These models are far from the ‘only tools’ we have to predict future climates and impacts. In fact, they are probably the worst choice of the tools we have! Various forms of pattern recognition are proving to be far superior, but are still completely ignored by the AGW crowd.
I recall Bill Gray at a conference 25 years ago saying that he would jump off one of the Rocky Mountains if global temperatures did not begin a cooling trend in the first several decades of the 21st Century. While that trend has not yet materialized, the warming has certainly stopped and more scientists are expecting some cooling over the next 10 to 20 years. Bill’s forecast is still on track, and it was based on recognizing the historical trends in climate history. The computer models, which do not recognize any patterns from the past, have proven to be inaccurate 100% of the time.
Peer Nowack is probably not old enough to remember a time without computers. There is another way to look at the world Peer, and it has some advantages over your way.
It’s worse than that. CACA cultists have tried to get rid of the patterns derived from actual observations, the study of which is useful, in order to sell their GIGO computer-derived & cooked book “adjusted” snake oil. They provide the “science” their political masters desire.
The ozone layer in the lower stratosphere is -40 deg C. No IR radiation from this can warm the surface. It’s just impossible as the energy levels equivalent to these energies are filled at the surface and will be reflected back outward.
Not true, take for example the ocean surface, that will readily absorb any IR incident on it regardless of the temperature of the source. Check out this graph:
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/spectra.gif
Emission from O3 is present at both 325K and 220K how is the surface supposed to know what temperature the 1000 cm-1 light came from?
In the case of the Antarctic graph the O3 signal is hotter than the surface.
“What they discovered is a reduction in global surface warming of approximately 20%… This difference is due to ozone changes in the lower stratosphere in the tropics, which are mainly caused by changes in the atmospheric circulation under climate change.”
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Why do they word things like that? It’s like they are deliberately trying to obscure what they mean. They say the reduction in warming is “due to ozone changes.” But they don’t say what those changes were. So, was it an increase in ozone that cooled surface temperatures, or a decrease? I don’t see where they say either way. If ozone is a greenhouse gas, I assume that it would cause warming. So was the cooling they discovered caused by a reduction in ozone?
See, if ozone really does affect surface temperatures, wouldn’t that give us a possible way to control global warming should it become necessary? But first we need to know what causes cooling, reducing ozone or increasing it. Is that actually spelled out in this piece and I just missed it?
Louis
If the ozone layer in the stratosphere gets warmer, it means that more energy is radiating out of the atmosphere. The “greenhouse” mechanism is due to a cooler stratosphere.