From the “this ought to shut up the “Skydragon slayers” department. Despite sophomoric claims that I’m a “denier”, I’ve never disputed that CO2 has a role in warming via retardation of IR transfer from the surface to the top of the atmosphere. What is really the issue related to AGW claims are the posited/modeled but not observed feedbacks and the logarithmic (not linear) saturation curve response of CO2. Along those lines, eyeballing the graph presented from the north slope of Alaska, it appears there might be a bit of a slowdown or “pause” in the rate of forcing from about 2007 onward. Hopefully, LBL will release the data for independent analysis.
First direct observation of carbon dioxide’s increasing greenhouse effect at the Earth’s surface
Berkeley Lab researchers link rising CO2 levels from fossil fuels to an upward trend in radiative forcing at two locations
Scientists have observed an increase in carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect at the Earth’s surface for the first time. The researchers, led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s increasing capacity to absorb thermal radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface over an eleven-year period at two locations in North America. They attributed this upward trend to rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel emissions.
The influence of atmospheric CO2 on the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing heat from the Earth (also called the planet’s energy balance) is well established. But this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now. The research is reported Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature.
The results agree with theoretical predictions of the greenhouse effect due to human activity. The research also provides further confirmation that the calculations used in today’s climate models are on track when it comes to representing the impact of CO2.
The scientists measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s contribution to radiative forcing at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one on the North Slope of Alaska, from 2000 to the end of 2010. Radiative forcing is a measure of how much the planet’s energy balance is perturbed by atmospheric changes. Positive radiative forcing occurs when the Earth absorbs more energy from solar radiation than it emits as thermal radiation back to space. It can be measured at the Earth’s surface or high in the atmosphere. In this research, the scientists focused on the surface.
They found that CO2 was responsible for a significant uptick in radiative forcing at both locations, about two-tenths of a Watt per square meter per decade. They linked this trend to the 22 parts-per-million increase in atmospheric CO2 between 2000 and 2010. Much of this CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels, according to a modeling system that tracks CO2 sources around the world.
“We see, for the first time in the field, the amplification of the greenhouse effect because there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb what the Earth emits in response to incoming solar radiation,” says Daniel Feldman, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and lead author of the Nature paper.
“Numerous studies show rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but our study provides the critical link between those concentrations and the addition of energy to the system, or the greenhouse effect,” Feldman adds.
He conducted the research with fellow Berkeley Lab scientists Bill Collins and Margaret Torn, as well as Jonathan Gero of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Timothy Shippert of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Eli Mlawer of Atmospheric and Environmental Research.
The scientists used incredibly precise spectroscopic instruments operated by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. These instruments, located at ARM research sites in Oklahoma and Alaska, measure thermal infrared energy that travels down through the atmosphere to the surface. They can detect the unique spectral signature of infrared energy from CO2.
Other instruments at the two locations detect the unique signatures of phenomena that can also emit infrared energy, such as clouds and water vapor. The combination of these measurements enabled the scientists to isolate the signals attributed solely to CO2.
“We measured radiation in the form of infrared energy. Then we controlled for other factors that would impact our measurements, such as a weather system moving through the area,” says Feldman.
The result is two time-series from two very different locations. Each series spans from 2000 to the end of 2010, and includes 3300 measurements from Alaska and 8300 measurements from Oklahoma obtained on a near-daily basis.
Both series showed the same trend: atmospheric CO2 emitted an increasing amount of infrared energy, to the tune of 0.2 Watts per square meter per decade. This increase is about ten percent of the trend from all sources of infrared energy such as clouds and water vapor.
Based on an analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s CarbonTracker system, the scientists linked this upswing in CO2 -attributed radiative forcing to fossil fuel emissions and fires.
The measurements also enabled the scientists to detect, for the first time, the influence of photosynthesis on the balance of energy at the surface. They found that CO2 -attributed radiative forcing dipped in the spring as flourishing photosynthetic activity pulled more of the greenhouse gas from the air.
###
The scientists used the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Berkeley Lab, to conduct some of the research.
The research was supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
Climate alarmists contend that the degree of global warmth over the latter part of the 20th century, and continuing to the present day, was greater than it was at any other time over the past one to two millennia, because this contention helps support their claim that what they call the “unprecedented” temperatures of the past few decades were CO2-induced. Hence, they cannot stomach the thought that the Medieval Warm Period of a thousand years ago could have been just as warm as, or even warmer than, it has been recently, especially since there was so much less CO2 in the air a thousand years ago than there is now. Likewise, they are equally loath to admit that temperatures of the Roman Warm Period of two thousand years ago may also have rivaled, or exceeded, those of the recent past, since atmospheric CO2 concentrations at that time were also much lower than they are today. As a result, climate alarmists rarely even mention the Roman Warm Period, as they are happy to let sleeping dogs lie.
Finally the data shows quite clearly that from the Holocene Optimum to Present the overall temperature trend has been down punctuated with warm periods.
What is driving the climate is NOT CO2, but rather Milankovitch Cycles which have been driving the climate on a slow gradual cooling trend for the past 10,000 years or so, this gradual cooling trend being superimposed with periods of active solar activity from time to time such as the Medieval Warm Period or the recent Modern Warm period, causing brief warming counter trends.
The data shows quite clearly that this is the case ,but then again those who believe in AGW do not go by the data ,they make the data fit what they want to convey.
I will send another chart showing what has been happening during the Holocene.
Isn’t it a thermodynamic law that a warming object WILL increase the amount of it’s outgoing radiation to the 4th power of the temperature increase? The warmer something gets…the more energy it radiates…
Also depends on emissivity. A black pipe will radiate more than an aluminum lagged pipe. Black wood burning stoves emit more heat than chrome plated ones. The amount of infrared back radiated from a clear night sky must be corrected for a low emissivity. Simply pointing a non-contact IR meter at the sky without correcting for emissivity is misleading .
Actually, that has nothing at all to do with thermodynamics. It’s a radiation physics matter.
I rest my case and made my points.
.
These two sites are northern hemisphere only so its not possible to extrapolate to the whole planet. Would be interested to know why this hasn’t been extended to places like Antarctica and other southern hemisphere locations where there are already scientific weather stations.
As I said elsewhere: As time went by the AGW advocates drove themselves into a frenzy. It is a sort of a verbal Tarantella.
Thanx, Vuk, you have just identified the origins of the American dance known as the “swing”, first seen in the mid-forties.
If you like that sort of dance, check out some of the moves by ‘swing” dancers.
Ok let me get this straight. According to Hansen et al and others the Earths energy imbalance is .85watts per sq mtr. Correct me if I’m off here. They seem to be saying that Co2 is responsible for less than 20% of the Earths energy imbalance. If that’s the case (and please correct me if I’m wrong) then I’m OK with this. That would mean Co2 has increased temps by .2C over the last 134 since “official” records began. Shocking!
Oops that should be less than 25% and .25C of warming over 134yrs
I wonder if they made the same weather pattern ‘correction’ every spring? I wonder if their weather pattern corrections were the same over time?
Well come on now; we all know that weather isn’t climate so you have to eliminate weather. Do enough data cherry picking, and pretty soon absolutely nothing at all happens.
That tends to happen when you average stuff.
Mother Gaia never averages anything.
I am not suggesting the corrections should be the same over time! I am wondering if their corrections were unbiased or appropriate. For example, was a correction made that was unique to spring, that produced a suggested association with reduced carbon dioxide (due to increased photosynthesis) and reduced forcing.
AHAH!!! Look everyone, they found the Earth’s long sought-after ideal and one true temperature. It was about 1999-2000 when their surface forcing was at zero!
Seriously though, those graph’s left axis should be labeled surface forcing anomaly compared to 2000, right?
Furthermore, outgoing thermal radiation SHOULDN’T be the same as incoming solar radiation, correct? Because of this little thing called photosynthesis that literally absorbs visible light in order to create molecular bonds.
Actually, I’d be pretty disappointed if their data collection DID NOT SHOW a correlation between IR absorbance and CO2 concentrations. That would be grounds to rewrite physics texts.
However, the elephant in the room is not a singular aspect of the model construction, but rather the symphony of elements being woven together. How can a model be considered correct when the most prevalent GHG is not modeled adequately?
I appreciate the modeler’s problem though. How do you go about modeling a thunderstorm is such a large model?
This only confirms an increase in energy received over a 10 year period in a specific location (if measurements are correct). It does not prove the reason for it. The CO2 connection is pure speculation.
Even around Barrow, Alaska, there is a heat island effect.
http://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=geography_pubs
The paper looks to be a statical analysis of spectroscopy without attention to wind field effects, UHI, or even a cursory review of prior literature (UHI) and station siting.
Nature no doubt accepted the publishing fee with a smile.
There is also a temperature dependency on the absorption and emission of radiation by CO2. (or any other IR sensitive gas)
The final 3 paragraphs of their manuscript:
Clearly they used correlation to infer causation.
My thought is they might have found a similar R^2 values if they had plotted their surface forcing measurements with the solar 2000-2011 Umbral Intensity (as the upward sloping secular trend)
http://i62.tinypic.com/zn7l2o.jpg
and the Seasonal variations are being driven by the varying Polar Field strengths (N+S):
http://i62.tinypic.com/19c8g.jpg
note: the 2 solar data graphs above are courtesy of Dr Leif Svalgaard, Stanford Univ.
Here is their Figure 4.
http://i61.tinypic.com/15q5hyp.jpg
Do they explain why the forcing data changes so dramatically over time? Is it the data becoming more variable or is the thickness of the line the error? If it’s the error, why does the error increase?
RWTurner,
They hand waved-off the increasing variability with this statement (also above, their 2nd to last paragrahP:
That explanation, in light of the obvious increasingly variability from 2004 to end-2010, seems to fall short to me when I eyeball the plots.
Where do you find the full paper?
The nature.com website.
Joel, thanks, but to me it was paywalled. I guess I’ll have to wait.
Somebody want to go in and check the data?
Here is the Southern Plains Radiation Centre.
http://www.arm.gov/sites/sgp
They have been here for many, many years and I am very surprised to see this new data suddenly appear. I’ve used some of this data from another site before and there may be a seasonal component of radiation but whether that is so directly tied to seasonal change in CO2 – I doubt it.
I am curious why they just used the period 2000 to end-2010. Why not into 2012 or 2013?
Probably because all the data doesn’t show the intended correlation. Here’s a previous paper by one of the same authors. Note the period is 1997-2011. It appears they cherry picked a subset to get the result they wanted.
Long-Term Trends in Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance over the U.S. Southern Great Plains
P. Jonathan Gero
“The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring”
I too strongly suspect they cherry-picked that time frame from their data set. Someone in their field needs to openly call them on it.
Their Excel spreadsheet (in Excel 2010 .xlsx format) is available here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/source_data/nature14240-f4.xlsx
I used the data supplied in the datafile (along with supplemented CO2 measurements from the Southern Plains Radiation Centre) to check whether 5.35 Ln(CO2) works here.
Well, it is very close (measured is a little lower than the theory).
Now the question is how much data selection is going on here. Downwelling Long-wave at Southern Plains is on the order of 325 W/m2 on average. How did they tease out a 0.2 W/m2 signal?
http://s9.postimg.org/recefss1b/CO2_Forcing_at_SPRC_Feldman_2014.png
Bill,
Could you post the linear fit equations and R^2 numbers for those two lines, please. Thanks.
Joel
joelobryan
The measured forcing line would be about 4.46 ln(CO2curr/CO2orig) versus 5.35 in the theory.
I can’t give you an R^2 because there are different time/dates on the x axis between the datasets but it would be a fairly high number.
I don’t think it is possible to pull out a +/- 0.2 W/m2 signal from the data.
Here is one day’s radiation measurements from Table Mountain Colorado. +/- 0.2 W/m2 signal from that?
http://s18.postimg.org/s66p367ft/Table_Mountain_All.png
The only thing the data shows at the top of this article is more CO2 will exert greater forcing.
The question it does not answer is what is the reason for the increase in CO2? The answer is the warmer climate. AGW has it back words.
Salvatore Del Prete
February 25, 2015 at 2:27 pm
The question it does not answer is what is the reason for the increase in CO2?
————–
Maybe that is the way the climate and Atmosphere get at a cooling trend that it supposes to be. 🙂
cheers
The error margins on the “estimates” given to all of the “natural” sources of carbon dioxide in the atmospheric cycle are so large that the “estimated” human contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere can easily fit within them multiple times. Meaning that ANY natural source can fluctuate a LOT and still fall within the error bands of their estimates and it makes their “estimate” of the human contribution meaningless.
If warmists insist that the oceans are heating up, and warming water out-gasses more CO2, then the increase in CO2 could be coming from the oceans.
I like how the forcing is zero or negative for about 375ppm CO2 and lower…
I pointed this out earlier and no one responded. I think that is an anomaly compared to their starting date.
The average radiative forcings go down in 2002 from 0.033586957 in 2001 to 0.026244275 a drop of 0.007342682.
It also dropped in 2009 from 0.220432314 in 2008 to 0.213569405 a drop of 0.006862909.
So how does that happen with continuously increasing CO2 when everything else has supposedly been accounted for.
IF the baseline CO2 concentration is 300 with lambda =5.35 that results in approx 3K = 5.35Ln(2) on doubling to 600. However, if we are looking at their results as being accurate, then the 366 (2001) to 386 (2011) yields 1.064 W/m^2 and 1.384 W/m^2 or a increase of .32 W/m^2 over a decade. However, their paper indicates a gain of .2 W/m^2. This is approximately a 43% reduction in the standard model. In other words,
They have published, empirical evidence to show that their models need to be reduced by 43% to fit this data.
Read the IPCC report agian.. that 5.35 * ln 2 gives a figure in WATTS, not degrees. That confusion has led to some wild predictions of global warming. 5.35* ln2 is about 3.7 watts, so my 3.97 watts mentiond earlier was too high.
Ignore my equals, as the 3k come from the 5.35ln(2) calculation but the result is in w/m^2. The difference is still .12 W/m^2 or a 43% reduction.
I’m not sure I would put stock in a single low anomaly from a clearly upward trend. Has anyone been paying attention to the PDO lately? If it flips, it could mean an end to any “hiatus” whatsoever.
http://margaret.atmos.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
The PDO was about as high as it gets for the end of 2014, and all we got was 6th warmest temps. The AMO, however, is primed to go negative. That should be good news for you. You don’t actually want the earth to heat in a catastrophic way, do you?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/30/amopdo-temperature-variation-one-graph-says-it-all/
Graph shows US temp only. I was referring to global temps. Also, PDO by its name is a decadal oscillation, and what matters is the cumulative heat released from the Pacific ocean to the atmosphere. And no, I don’t want the plant to warm catastrophically, but neither am I going to bury my head in the sand.
“You don’t actually want the earth to heat in a catastrophic way, do you?”
What I worry about is the potential for cooling and the impact it would have on world food supplies. The world has so many more people to feed now than during the cold dips of the last century or so.
Even a small dip in temperature could cause millions to suffer who could not afford the higher prices.
Barry
You ask and say
Bob Tisdale constantly monitors and reports on the PDO. I commend you to search for his articles on WUWT.
The current plateau of global temperature will certainly end sometime with the onset of either global cooling or global warming. You fail to say why you think the PDO is the only and/or major probable cause of the inevitable end to the current plateau of global temperature.
If pigs grow wings, it could mean an end to any non-flying pigs whatsoever. This, of course, has as much relevance to this thread as your post.
Richard
Article says: “The measurements also enabled the scientists to detect, for the first time, the influence of photosynthesis on the balance of energy at the surface.”….PNAS study on CO2 v photosynthesis was published 10/13/14, “Impact of mesophyll diffusion on estimated global land CO2 fertilization.” They studied much larger time frame than above, 1901-2010, found 17% more CO2 was absorbed by photosynthesis than previously thought. Not sure if they observed No. America or whole planet. “Global carbon cycle models have not explicitly represented this internal drawdown and therefore overestimate CO2 available for carboxylation and underestimate photosynthetic responsiveness to atmospheric CO2.“
And do they realize that primary producers derive their energy for growth from the sun, therefore upwelling radiation should be lower than downwelling radiation when photosythesis is occurring at the surface? Because it doesn’t appear that they realize this.
CO2 also allows more radiation to space from within the atmosphere than would have occurrred without it.
That radiation to space reduces the energy returning to the surface in adiabatic descent.
Have they thought to deduct that reduction in energy returning to the surface from any reduction in energy escaping from surface to space?
I suspect that if they had thought to attend to that aspect the net thermal effect from more CO2 for the atmosphere as a whole would be zero.
Exactly. Not only that, but when it gets warmer lower in the atmosphere this enhances convection which carries the energy (both CO2 absorbed and latent heat) higher which enhances its ability to radiate to space. It also wrings out more water vapor reducing that particular GHG at altitude which is critical to the overall energy balance.
so lambda becomes ~ 3.34 (62.5% of 5.35). (62.5% comes from 0.2 / 0.32 = 0.625).
But this still begs the following questions:
1. If this increased radiative forcing occurred, why then did the Earth’s global temperature anomaly remain flat?
2. Why then did the Southern Ocean get colder and Antarctic sea ice levels begin rising so dramatically in the last 4 years (since 2010)?
The one obvious possibility is that natural variation and feed back trumps CO2 forcing.
But I also suspect, there is something in that date range they have used that doesn’t hold true after 2011.
Also, the forcing line on their plotted data becomes thicker with time, and I assume the thickness of the line is the error, so why is the possible error becoming greater with time?
RWTurner,
The thicker red line line (their surface forcing (IR) measurements) is clearly due to a denser data set (more data points per day) as they went along in time. Fewer outages would be their explanation.
See this paper and all your questions will be answered.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1?journalCode=clim
Long-Term Trends in Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance over the U.S. Southern Great Plains
P. Jonathan Gero
“The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring”
Based on the authors’ Schematic (Extended Data Figure 1 at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature14240_SF1.html) and Figure 4 (joelobryan comment at 1439), it appears that they have added together all the spectral responses (not just from CO2) in processing the data and making their interpretations and conclusions. A problem??
I’m not particularly surprised at the results. The problem all along has been the claimed feedbacks that would make warming “catastrophic” that don’t seem to be happening in real life.
Crosspatch,
Apparently they have the data for H2O forcing that would permit them to to verify the feedback assumption. I would think that if it did verify they would have included it in the paper. So, my assumption is that either it did not or they must have another paper currently in submission. I guess wee will know shortly.
We all ready know the feedback assumption is bad. In a century we have seen about 1 degree of warming. SOME of that is due to land use changes, SOME of that is due to natural variability, SOME of that is due to CO2. We also know that we saw a nearly identical period of warming in duration and magnitude from 1910 to 1940 as from 1975 to 2005 when CO2 emissions could not possibly have been a factor. We can simply tell from the data that the feedback is not happening.
Here is their SGP and NSA site collected T and H2O vertical profiles from radiosonde data.
Trends in the thermodynamic state at SGP and NSA
http://i60.tinypic.com/nx9f1d.jpg
This is what they wrote about it:
Here is their calculated forcing data for the GHGs.
Vertical sensitivity
http://i58.tinypic.com/333bn1v.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/2rogr9c.jpg
Where they comment:
Thanks for the info Joel. It is going to take me a bit of time to digest it.
I haven’t read the paper so I cannot comment on the results. However, I do hope they explained the negative clipping on the forcing on the ‘Southern Great Plains’ graph in the spring of 2007 and summer & fall of 20019. Without a full explanation of the cause I would have trouble accepting any of their forcing data as valid.
Well I think the mistake they made was sampling Oklahoma and Alaska. This only allows them to extrapolate for the North American continent. If they has used Alaska and Australia they could have extrapolated for the entire globe.
I am sure they will fix this in their next iteration, but are currently sidetracked with trying to extrapolate 2 used flashlight batteries into a nuclear reactor.
LOL.
LOL X2
Yeah, remember how the US is only 2% of the globe and the Medieval Warm Period was localized to Europe and Greenland – once upon a time in fairyland ?
Alx,
Probably same result if they’d done Australia. My feeling is: “It’s the sun, stupid (that is, insolation at TOA). Always has been always will be.”
The big Climate science news for 2015 will likely come from OCO-2.
First to fall will possibly be the commonly held belief that atmospheric CO2 is well-mixed:
http://i61.tinypic.com/2ducrq9.jpg
After that, OCO-2 data on the seasonal variations in global natural sinks and sources will make the anthropogenic CO2 contribution even less consequential, thus its impact as the source of the overall rising trend untenable.
Joel, have a look at the scale: +/- 8 ppmv. That is +/- 2% of full scale CO2.
The seasonal in/out is 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere within months. If the resulting measurements show only a 2% change, then CO2 changes are rapidly mixed in…