Oddball claim: Plants boost extreme temperatures by 5°C

From the UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES and the “temperatures are always hotter no matter what” department comes this study that makes very little sense on the face of it, especially when we have articles like this one: Hot in the City? How plants can help lower the temperature in towns

. Of course, you have to consider the source of the claim, the same University that launched the “ship of fools” expedition to Antarctica.

Early greening caused by global warming may amplify heatwaves across large parts of the Northern Hemisphere. CREDIT Sunny Day by Andreas Wienemann (CC2.0)
Early greening caused by global warming may amplify heatwaves across large parts of the Northern Hemisphere. CREDIT Sunny Day by Andreas Wienemann (CC2.0)

Improved plant types in climate model show significant impact on temperatures resulting from earlier spring greening

Heatwaves from Europe to China are likely to be more intense and result in maximum temperatures that are 3°C to 5°C warmer than previously estimated by the middle of the century – all because of the way plants on the ground respond to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This projected temperature increase found by Australian researchers and published in Nature Scientific Reports is more than half the change forecast by the IPCC under the business-as-usual model. The biggest temperature changes were projected to occur over needleleaf forests, tundra and agricultural land used to grow crops.

“We often underestimate the role of vegetation in extreme temperature events as it has not been included in enough detail in climate models up until this point,” said lead author Dr Jatin Kala from Murdoch University.

“These more detailed results are confronting but they help explain why many climate models have consistently underestimated the increase in the intensity of heatwaves and the rise in maximum temperatures when compared to observations.”

To get their results the researchers looked at data from 314 plant species across 56 field sites. In particular, they investigated stomata, small pores on plant leaves that take in carbon dioxide and lose water to the atmosphere.

Previously, most climate models assumed all plants trade water for carbon in the exactly same way, ignoring experimental evidence showing considerable variation among plant types. By not accounting for these differences, models have likely over-estimated the amount of water lost to the atmosphere in some regions.

If plants release less water there is more warming and a consequent increase in heat wave intensity.

The study is unique because, for the first time, it used the best available observations to characterise different plants water-use strategies within a global climate model.

“These world-first results will have significant impact on the development of climate models around the world,” said one of the study’s authors, Prof Andy Pitman, Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science at UNSW.

“However, it is the bringing together of observations by ecologists, theory from biologists, physics from land surface modellers and climate science in the global modeling, that is revolutionary.”

The work that led to the study required investment in detailed observations, model development, and high performance computing.

“This is a fantastic example of STEM-based science bringing together the ecological and climate modeling communities; two sectors which rarely work hand-in-hand,” said Prof Pitman.

It was also a great example of public-good science, said Professor Belinda Medlyn, theoretical biologist at Western Sydney University and co-author of the study.

“Our study of stomata was originally intended just to learn more about how plants work,” said Prof Medlyn.

“We were really not expecting to find these important implications for heatwaves.”

According to Dr Kala public good research of this magnitude can only be achieved through the strong institutions Australia has built up over time.

“These institutions have enabled us to develop a world-leading climate model, unique observation systems and computational infrastructure that has far reaching benefits,” said Dr Kala.

CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science developed the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) model used in this study in partnership.

ARC Discovery funding enabled ecological researchers at Macquarie and Western Sydney Universities to put together the plant observations from around the world to develop the new vegetation model.

At the same time the National eResearch and Collaboration Tools and Research Project (NECTAR) was key to managing the data produced by the ACCESS model. The model itself used National Computational Infrastructure supported and resourced by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

“This long term investment in key infrastructure is why Australian science continues to punch above its weight,” said Prof Pitman.

“It’s an investment with many public benefits for us and the rest of the world, that every Australian can be proud of.”

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Marcus
March 21, 2016 3:24 pm

Well I guess, by their math, billions of Humans having sex every night must increase the temperature by at least 19 C…..

george e. smith
Reply to  Marcus
March 21, 2016 3:35 pm

Well I agree with this result. It is quite clear from the attached picture that the plants are NOT getting in the way of the sunlight, so it is applying its full heating potential.
g

M Seward
March 21, 2016 3:28 pm

These clowns have thrown all caution to the wind now. They are basically on a war footing after the funding cutbacks to CSIRO and as they say ‘all’s fair in love and war’. Andy Pitman is fast approaching a Flannery rating of RED HOT RAVING FUNDAMENTALIST. Maybe he feels he is back in the pack after his colleague’s Antarctic Ship of Fools farcpedition and needs to put on a spurt, after all isn’t that what XSpurts do?

Reply to  M Seward
March 21, 2016 7:15 pm

Flannery’s coming to my town soon, $10 a punter to listen to him. Whatever *we* think of him, he is very well respected and is pretty sure to get a big audience.
Am I the only one to read the praise of Australian “institutions” as a coded way of saying “don’t sack the CSIRO climate scientists?”

M Seward
Reply to  Richard A. O'Keefe
March 21, 2016 7:47 pm

On a serious note Flannery is an interesting case. He is a very good communicator and comes across as such. He has done genuine work in his actual field of science and done some very watchable road trip tyope TV shows about Australia.
That said he has that zealot’s weakness of mind where when he believes from the heart he just loses the plot and is utterly unscientific in his thinking. Witness his belief that Lindy Chamberlain must have murdered her baby Azaria because if a dingo had taken the infant (which is what actually happened) then Tim thought that would be very bad PR for dingoes,l him being a fan of native animals and all.
That sort of thinking is just unhinged and purely emotional and lacks any claim to objectivity. It is the antithesis of the scientific approach. At least he had the guts to apologise a few years ago when Mrs Chamberlains conviction was finally quashed and the bizarre and vicious witch hunt that gripped this country finally flushed down the legal toilet.

Seth
Reply to  Richard A. O'Keefe
March 21, 2016 8:54 pm

M Seward wrote: *That said he has that zealot’s weakness of mind where when he believes from the heart he just loses the plot and is utterly unscientific in his thinking. Witness his belief that Lindy Chamberlain must have murdered her baby Azaria because if a dingo had taken the infant (which is what actually happened) then Tim thought that would be very bad PR for dingoes,l him being a fan of native animals and all.*
Everyone has the foibles of the human condition. All people think unscientifically because the human mind is deceptive. That doesn’t differentiate a zealot from a scientist. What differentiates them, is the scientist changes their mind when presented with evidence, and the zealot constructs conspiracy theories, and shouts “troll”, while their misconceptions grow stronger.
Flannery changed his position about Azaria, which is what a scientist does.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Richard A. O'Keefe
March 22, 2016 12:05 am

His first degree level qualification was English lit. So yes, he is a good communicator. Ufortunately for him and his followers, he communicates BS in relation to climate change. I have watched some of his documentaries about Australia and EVEN IN THE FACE OF EVIDENCE THE CLIMATE CHANGES, SEA LEVELS CHANGE over EONS, he still believes emissions of CO2 from human activities DRIVES climate change. So, in that respect he is no better a scientist than those on the “ship of fools”.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Richard A. O'Keefe
March 22, 2016 12:11 am

“Seth
March 21, 2016 at 8:54 pm
Flannery changed his position about Azaria, which is what a scientist does.”
He changed his position in the face of evidence to the contrary on his views in this case (Over 30 years later). With regards to climate change, regardless of the actual evidence, he believes humans are changing the climate, globally, via emissions of CO2 by burning fossil fuels and this is bad for the planet. Could he be proven wrong, again?

Seth
Reply to  M Seward
March 21, 2016 8:45 pm

These clowns have thrown all caution to the wind now. They are basically on a war footing after the funding cutbacks to CSIRO and as they say ‘all’s fair in love and war’.
Transpiration lowers the surface temperature. If stomatal number or size drops in response to increasing CO2, then transpiration drops, and the surface temperature in heat waves is higher.
I’m failing to see the incaution, or the “FUNDAMENTALIST”.

Reply to  Seth
March 21, 2016 10:47 pm

@Seth, as a farmer I have experienced heat waves on my fruit farms, plants react to heat by shutting down to save water, this rarely last for more than a few days and only during the day time. As such I, at those levels and the time frame involved, sincerely doubt CO2, in this context, has any long term, if any effect, on climate change as these people claim.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  Seth
March 22, 2016 9:36 am

In drought areas, if water is a limiting factor for plant growth and each plant uses less, why wouldn’t plant density rise, perhaps keeping the total tranpirable water volume the same?

Horace Jason Oxboggle
Reply to  M Seward
March 22, 2016 12:47 am

Flannery was directly responsible for the vast spending on desalination plants at various coastal locations in Australia. Most are idle, though costing huge sums in maintenance/monitoring/union jobs. I suggest that what was really needed were deflanneration plants!

March 21, 2016 3:34 pm

I guess the concept of plants producing shade is irrelevant.

Chris
Reply to  dbakerber
March 22, 2016 9:10 am

Yes, it is irrelevant to the impact on transpiration on air temperature.

Rob Potter
March 21, 2016 3:34 pm

But the models don’t underestimate the warming – they overestimate. The whole study begins with a false premise. Junk.

Reply to  Rob Potter
March 21, 2016 3:42 pm

If the models were fixed to account for this they would overestimate warming even more and be even scarier?

Richard G
Reply to  Rob Potter
March 21, 2016 4:10 pm

Yes, I stopped reading when I saw they said the models have been underestimating the temperature increase. Maybe they were looking at the model output graphs upside down.

PiperPaul
Reply to  Richard G
March 21, 2016 4:59 pm

Climate activists would know if a graph was upside down, wouldn’t they?

Rob Dawg
March 21, 2016 3:38 pm

If plants release less water there is more warming and a consequent increase in heat wave intensity.
And thus higher CO2 sequestration. Funny that didn’t make the editorial cut.

Curious George
March 21, 2016 3:38 pm

“This is a fantastic example of STEM-based science”. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Fantastic indeed, Professor Pitman.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  Curious George
March 22, 2016 4:12 am

yeah fantastic..said as an Aussie with Sarcastic intent.
so I wonder then why these bloody fools didnt get the lessened respiration when ALL our Bloody Eucalypts and other native plants ignorant sh*theads like flimflam and others have been so called Experts in studies OF for night 200yrs?
hell some of our trees are so smart they turn leaves to minimise sun hitting them!!ie the angle east west to present thinnest area possible.

jon
March 21, 2016 3:40 pm

I guess that means that if we strip the vegetation from semi-arid lands. or if we take the trees out of our cities and suburbs, replacing them with concrete perhaps, they will get cooler, Well the sooner people cool down by removing all those pesky trees the better. I wonder why you see cows sitting under trees in the middle of a hot day, boy are they dumb!
Hmm, better study this, Grants anyone?

Annie
Reply to  jon
March 21, 2016 7:09 pm

Not only dumb cows; dumb sheep, horses and chooks and dumb humans park themselves and their vehicles in the shade under trees to try to keep cool. How stupid! When they could all be out on the concrete in towns or bare soil in the desert when the temps are into the 35-40C plus range; much cooler that way! Ye gods! Give me patience!

Tom Halla
March 21, 2016 3:40 pm

I just don’t understand how variations in plant respiration increases local heating. I thought Australia was reducing finding for global warming research, anyway. This seems like a a lame attempt to tie plant biology to a funding source that is going away.

Reply to  Tom Halla
March 21, 2016 4:19 pm

It is only increasing it with respect to the previous models/guesses that they are currently using. So it makes the models worse wrt reality.

Reply to  Tom Halla
March 21, 2016 6:04 pm

Even nature must fall in line with communism.. where have I heard that before 😉

Chris
Reply to  Tom Halla
March 22, 2016 9:12 am

Transpiration helps plants cool, just the same was as perspiration helps humans cool. If the plant leaves warm up, then the air will warm via convection.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  Chris
March 22, 2016 9:43 am

Water transpiration is more or less a byproduct of CO2 uptake. Plants aren’t trying to lose water. It’s just that when the stoma open to allow CO2 in, water goes out as a matter of course. That’s why with a higher partial pressure of CO2 some plants become more drought resistant. They produce fewer stoma to get the same CO2 uptake and thereby lose less water.

TheLastDemocrat
March 21, 2016 3:45 pm

It’s worse than we thought.

FJ Shepherd
March 21, 2016 3:48 pm

FFS is all I can say.

Marcus
Reply to  FJ Shepherd
March 21, 2016 3:51 pm

…Ummm, Shepard….That is all you ever say !! I have to admit, it is to the point though ! LOL ….

Grady
March 21, 2016 3:48 pm

“If plants release less water there is more warming and a consequent increase in heat wave intensity.” … but wait a minute – don’t plants release the water as a vapor, not as a liquid? And doesn’t that water vapor enter the atmosphere? And isn’t water vapor a greenhouse gas?
Yup – another one from the “temperatures are always hotter no matter what” department 🙁

AB
Reply to  Grady
March 21, 2016 9:07 pm

That’s exactly what crossed my mind when I read this just now. More water vapour, by far the largest greenhouse gas, equals more warming. They want it both ways.
Here’s a cogent presentation arguing for cooling.
https://youtu.be/B1KYvz7FFrE

chris y
Reply to  Grady
March 22, 2016 9:47 am

Grady-
Indeed. This paper is actually cheery news.
It claims that decreased water vapor results in warming and more intense heat waves.
Therefore, increased water vapor due to surface warming of the oceans results in cooling and less intense heat waves.
Water vapor feedback is negative, not positive.

March 21, 2016 3:49 pm

Well, I guess if the plants absorb more solar energy, and more CO2 will cause them to, the initial thermalization of solar energy will be reduced. Since that must reduce the temperature of the ground less water will also evaporate from said ground. With less water vapor, the broad-spectrum absorber of long-wave IR, less solar energy will thermalize. If there is LESS HEAT we will, of course, see temperatures……wait….. they said what? But they say evaporating water off the surface of the sea will raise SSTs. I don’t think I understand and I don’t think they do.
Over time it could be that wasting water in fields might cause more clouds, cooling the area under the clouds. Less evaporation might reduce cloud cover somewhere, sometime but not right there and right them. Was it I who missed something or “them” (the authors)?

Hugs
Reply to  John H. Harmon
March 22, 2016 8:32 am

‘Well, I guess if the plants absorb more solar energy,’
In terms of Watts, how much this feedback would be? Just give an estimate.
Hint. By burning wood, you release the energy it absorbed during its lifetime.

Marcus
March 21, 2016 3:49 pm

..It seems the ” Green ” lobbyists have not only declared war on every bird that goes near their Choppers and Fryers, now they are declaring war on trees !! Oh the insanity. will it never end ?

March 21, 2016 3:53 pm

This is how the CAGW house of cards collapses. In absurdity that even the uninitiated can grok.
As here. The satellite observed ‘greening’ (NVDI) is this stomata phenomenon for C3 plants, with an inverted result to this ridiculous Aussie paper. Bottom line in observational biology, C3 plants produce more photosynthesis biomass at higher CO2 while transpiring less water. 85% of all plants. C4 plants (15%) evolved to survive under low CO2 conditions the past 60 million or so years. Biology v. Warmunist climastrology.

March 21, 2016 3:55 pm

Reading through the summary, it really doesnt read to me like a single actual measurement from an actual plant was ever taken.

JerH
March 21, 2016 3:56 pm

Clearly, the only way to stop Global Warming is to kill all the plants…and all the people.

drednicolson
Reply to  JerH
March 21, 2016 4:07 pm

Kill them all, Gaia will recognize her own.

Marcus
March 21, 2016 4:01 pm

……Agenda 21 !

Thin Air
March 21, 2016 4:07 pm

They are saying the climate models have made bad assumptions about the CO2 and H2O cycles of many plants. And that once the “correct” assumptions are made, per their wonderfully correct research, the models will show much higher temperatures that they do now.
But, as already noted by others here, these geniuses have no “system level” understanding of the climate and the role of plants in it.
I wonder whether the climate model owners will even buy into what they are saying. If this non-sense makes their predictions even more alarmist, I suspect many modelers will be quite interested.

Peter Miller
March 21, 2016 4:08 pm

This is obviously a very important research document and obviously huge amounts need to be spent on studying it further.
Just like every other piece of BS – and there are so many of them – masquerading as science in Klimate ‘research’.

tommyterroir
March 21, 2016 4:12 pm

Hard to tell what assumptions have been made here in this brief summary. Stomata close down to protect the plant from water stress, i.e. the plant stops transpiration to protect the plant when it can’t bring up water fast enough. My experience this relates to soil moisture status and humidity more directly than ambient temperature. Having spent a bit of time monitoring grape vine canopy temperatures on hot summer days on well drained, shallow soils I have seen the dramatic drop in canopy temperatures with the initiation of drip irrigation and I have seen adjacent vines on deeper, moister soils cool and content in no need of water. Thinking globally, one has to assume a warmer world is not wetter or more humid, or that earlier greening and with it earlier cooling does not compensate for lesser cooling that might come later..

Reply to  tommyterroir
March 21, 2016 10:57 pm

@ tommyterroir, your name gives you away!, As a former grape grower I completely agree with you, grapes have a notorious deep root system and with proper water management show little effects in a heat wave. In my experience leaves that showed stress were already close to the end of their life cycle and their demise had little effect on the quality of the crop. ( in fact many growers “stress” their vines to concentrate flavors by having less H20 in the grapes, a fairly common practice at the time).

Brian Bach
March 21, 2016 4:13 pm

Non-stop bullshit! You gotta hand it to these guys. They don’t let up. They will prove the Emperor is wearing clothes with mountains of headlines from papers that don’t stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. I think that even beyond the neo-Malthusian agenda, the purveyors want to show that they can bulldoze reality and make the public believe or at least dare not challenge anything they choose. Ultimately, as reality asserts itself, you cannot apply enough energy to suppress it, but boy, you can’t say they haven’t given it a good try. It’s exhausting.

Steve Fraser
Reply to  Brian Bach
March 21, 2016 4:25 pm

Non carborundum illegitimati…

Michael Jankowski
March 21, 2016 4:22 pm

LOL, climate models have consistently underestimated the rise in maximum temps? On what planet?

Pierre DM
Reply to  Michael Jankowski
March 21, 2016 6:51 pm

Their observations appear to be of the model output. I suspect that up until now the models have given rise to minimum temps but not enough to maximum temps during the daylight hours to match their expectations. Ergo the models have consistently underestimated their pre conceived output.
It could mean that climate sensitivity is even lower than they thought.

markl
March 21, 2016 4:23 pm

This reads like the crazed meandering of someone not connected with reality. The fact that this was even published is proof the MSM hasn’t a clue about what they publish regarding AGW.

March 21, 2016 4:27 pm

“However, it is the bringing together of observations by ecologists, theory from biologists, physics from land surface modellers and climate science in the global modeling, that is revolutionary.”
Good idea to depend on the modelers for fizicks? Give em another tool to insert into their favorite model. More positive feedback in a bunch models that are already positive feedback heavy.

TomRude
March 21, 2016 4:27 pm

One third of the PR praises their money source… Yeah be proud. LOL

Wagen
March 21, 2016 4:37 pm

On 2nd thought, maybe they are right, and you are wrong. Ah, “Claim” included in the header. Learn to argue instead of riling up your fans. It’s so boring.
Earth is warming.

Bill Partin
Reply to  Wagen
March 21, 2016 4:48 pm

No, it’s not.

Hugs
Reply to  Bill Partin
March 22, 2016 8:48 am

Depends on only the time scale you based your statement onto.
However I would welcome one degree K. They promised 4 to 10, so I’m gonna complain if I don’t get my extra degree.

Reply to  Wagen
March 21, 2016 6:11 pm

Meaningless comment of the day Wagen. Brown Star for you pal

Wagen
Reply to  Mark
March 22, 2016 3:33 pm

I am quite sure it doesn’t really register between all other meaningless comments here 😀

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Wagen
March 21, 2016 8:05 pm

That’s a bold claim given ~70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water and has only been measured with any accuracy since 1979.

March 21, 2016 4:41 pm

What do they make their models with….Balsa wood & glue ??? Have they been sniffing the glue ??

Peter
March 21, 2016 4:42 pm

Message – chop all plant life down and bury it, creating vast deserts. This will cool the planet and take carbon out of circulation. That will remove all animal life, remember animals eat plants and reduce them to CO2.
Sorry. There doesn’t seem to be much commonsense here.

Thomas
March 21, 2016 5:12 pm

Back in 2007 Richard Branson offered a $25 million dollar prize for the best CO2 removal process. I think it has not yet been awarded. I tried to register my scheme but it turned out you had to be recommend by “leading climate scientist” or something like that. James Hanson and Al Gore two of the official judges (haha). My plan was to selectively cut down the rain-forests of the world, convert the lumber to furniture, then regrow new trees that would suck CO2 from the air as they grow. I bet it’s the least expensive plan. ; )

Hugs
Reply to  Thomas
March 22, 2016 8:50 am

A tree is one of the best plans we have. But it’s not good enough.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  Thomas
March 22, 2016 9:54 am

Even granting that there was a problem, sequestering timber in the form of furniture and what-not isn’t a good scheme. The fecundity of tropical rain forests is due to the extremely high cycle rate of nutrients through the ecosystem. Rain forest soils are surprisingly infertile, in and of themselves. Hauling timber out without replacing the minerals and nitrogen would quickly exhaust the soil.

Jeff in Calgary
March 21, 2016 5:20 pm

I think it has become evident that the models are built to produce hot results no matter what input you test for. I would bet that they show heating from a cooling sun…

NW sage
March 21, 2016 5:22 pm

What is truly amazing is that this piece actually got published. In a real publication! The pandering plea for more research funds is sickening.

Chris
Reply to  NW sage
March 22, 2016 9:14 am

What are the specific scientific shortcomings in the paper?

March 21, 2016 6:22 pm

So the irrigation isn’t causing cooling by a net increase of water over vast areas of land?
How about the headline “Plants not as susceptible to heatwaves as previously thought”?
Talk about finding the negative spin…

Peterg
March 21, 2016 6:27 pm

One wonders what they are getting at. The hottest surfaces in sunlight have low reflectance, low transmittance, and low thermal conductivity. Vegetation hardly compares with say bare rock. On the other hand, if you are out thermalling, always go for the pine forests on sunlit slopes as opposed to broad leaf vegetation.
In any case in a warming world this effect should be self correcting. There would be more needle-leaf plants at higher latitudes, but the broad leafs would out-compete them at the lower latitudes which are larger in area and receive more sunlight.

Major Meteor
March 21, 2016 6:41 pm

Now they can add this truth to their models since the models are under reporting the actual global warming. They were really patting themselves on the back for this research. It’s going to take a while for the welts to subside.

mebbe
March 21, 2016 6:46 pm

From a “Centre of Excellence” it is reasonable to expect “fantastic” stuff. It’s a little disappointing that we have to wait several days between announcements of fantastic, world-changing discoveries.
This little gem of sublime silliness highlights the quirkiness of “global temperature” assessment. The melding of sub-surface sea-water temperature with the oddly named land surface temperature is bizarre enough, but the profs have bin Medlyn with measurements in the betwixt and between zone; the bottom metre and a half of the atmosphere, which they dub “the surface”.
When leaves transpire, they cool. When they cool, they pass the heat to the water vapour. Which becomes a constituent of the lower atmosphere.
As leaves cool, the air warms; but only at the altitude of condensation. If less evaporation occurs, less water is transferred to the air and less heat, also.

March 21, 2016 6:48 pm

I skimmed the paper, which is here:
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23418
It wasn’t the total piece of junk I was expecting. A number of things jumped out at me, like the results being accurate for Eurasia, but not North America. But the big flaw is probably this one:
First, the data behind this parameterisation are measured at leaf scale; it has not been confirmed that the differences among PFTs observed at this scale also emerge at canopy/ecosystem scale.
In other words, they measured one variable at the leaf level, and simply extrapolated to the entire ecosystem. Not kosher. But here’s the other thing. If the effect was as large as they claim, we’d have noticed a major uptick in heatwave intensity in the present and recent past.

TonyL
March 21, 2016 7:02 pm

I wonder how these researchers view themselves?

that is revolutionary
high performance computing
the strong institutions Australia has built up over time
a world-leading climate model
far reaching benefits
Australian science continues to punch above its weight
many public benefits for us and the rest of the world
every Australian can be proud of

Saving the World, for sure.

Horace Jason Oxboggle
Reply to  TonyL
March 22, 2016 1:15 am

There seems to be a direct correlation between increases in computer power and the ridiculousness of their results. I blame Gates/Jobs/Wang/Babbage etc!

Patrick MJD
March 21, 2016 7:15 pm

“CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science developed the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) model used in this study in partnership.”
Total garbage! Anyway folks, we will likely see many more “studies” like this in the coming months from agencies like CSIRO etc. It’s election year here in Australia and is likely to be a double dissolution election which may return a Labor lead coalition. We’re certainly on the path to ruin.

Unmentionable
March 21, 2016 7:42 pm

“These world-first results will have significant impact on the development of climate models around the world,” said one of the study’s authors …”
And this will no doubt supply the missing ingredient that has hitherto prevented any climate model from working in any acceptable, representative or useful predictive manner … well, … other than for supporting political distortions and creating absurd economically scandalous tax-wasting white-elephants … which infuriates voters and discredits the whole legitimacy of the project/process called ‘government’.
Other than that, pouring money down the toilet based on climate models is terrific.
Nevertheless, pseudo-‘climate’ modeling has now been perfected, and will henceforth project a rigorous future imaginative horror script, that powers grotesque and fantastic unproven narratives, that run counter to all we know, and also bears no resemblance to world that will actually be at the predicted junctures.
However, we must resolutely turn a blind-eye to minor quibbles, as they do not comport the correct color and flourish to the global GIGO complex and its narrative which stalks pseudo-journal column-inches, desirous to creating a stand-up pseudo-‘man’, out of any grandiosely-petty free standing straw that finds.
And thus did the ‘researchers’ did tout, as the $2 ladies-of-the-night.
“Roxanne! … you don’t have to put out your red-light.” – Sting

March 21, 2016 7:59 pm

Just curious about the term ‘heatwave intensity’. What does that mean? First, how is a heatwave defined, is it more than X days of maximum temperatures above an arbitrary temperature derived from ‘average’ temperatures? Then how does one heatwave become ‘more intense’ than another? High maximum temperatures? More days in the heatwave? And where are the statistics that show conclusively that we are having more heatwaves and that the heatwaves are ‘more intense’? What about cool waves? Just asking…

Reply to  templedelamour
March 21, 2016 8:02 pm

The definitions are all in the paper. I do wish people would read it before denigrating it.
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23418

Patrick MJD
Reply to  davidmhoffer
March 21, 2016 8:17 pm

I guess this team hasn’t heard of the cooling effects of plants, especially trees.

Reply to  davidmhoffer
March 21, 2016 8:27 pm

Just asking, not denigrating, thank you very much. Sorry I didn’t read the link… Now I did and looked at reference 6 to find:
‘Results from the daily temperature homogeneity analysis suggest that many instrumental measurements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were warm-biased. Correcting for these biases, over the period 1880 to 2005 the length of summer heat waves over western Europe has doubled and the frequency of hot days has almost tripled.’
So the ‘increase’ comes from the ‘adjusted’ temperatures not the actual instrumental record.

Unmentionable
Reply to  davidmhoffer
March 21, 2016 8:41 pm

Patrick MJD
March 21, 2016 at 8:17 pm
They have, the article states this:
“… If plants release less water there is more warming and a consequent increase in heat wave intensity. …”
Basically, if it’s a dry period, and plant turgidity is high, there’s less evapo-transpiration, so less cooling occurs. Their main point seems to be that not all plants transpire the same amounts, at the same rates, for the same time. Well, duh!
And rainfall rates, geography country rocks and soil type and porosity, storage runoff and evaporation rates aren’t similar either.
So why wouldn’t plants follow suit, given their geography, species and migration patterns are a palimpsest of prevailing and recent precipitation, drought and/or fire? The paper reads like one big no-sh_t Sherlock moment.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  davidmhoffer
March 21, 2016 11:43 pm

Well the claim is MORE CO2 = changes how plants respond (Yes we know this) = LIKELY MORE EXTREME HEAT WAVES (Only in a computer simulation). This is my takeaway view from the study.

Seth
March 21, 2016 8:40 pm

that makes very little sense on the face of it, especially when we have articles like this one: Hot in the City? How plants can help lower the temperature in towns.
The boost in temperature in compared to previous estimates, not compared to no plants.

March 21, 2016 9:29 pm

Let’s see, needle leafed forest and tundra. Talking boreal and mountain belts. Now, the boreal zone gets a lot of summer sun, but hardly any winter sun. They are saying extra CO2 makes these guys transpire less. Ok, but what provides the energy of vaporization, the leaf tissue or the atmosphere? Methinks the leaf.
The leaves [needles] get their CO2 faster, close up shop, save themselves a lot of energy of vaporization, and stay warmer.
This saved energy they can radiate off at night, but there is less water vapor in the atmosphere to slow its exit to space…

March 21, 2016 10:30 pm

Internationally, Australia punches well above its weight in the production of Nutty Professors and Professor Andy Pitman is set to rival Professor Turkey and Tim Flannery in the ratings for Nutty Professor of the Year. He must never have stepped outside the air-conditioning in his office, yet, on a hot day to stand under the cool shade of the nearby trees, and note temperature differences that the trees and grass make..

Reply to  ntesdorf
March 21, 2016 10:44 pm

He must never have stepped outside the air-conditioning in his office, yet, on a hot day to stand under the cool shade of the nearby trees, and note temperature differences that the trees and grass make..
You must not have read the paper or you would know that isn’t the claim being made. The claim is that the trees and grass cool LESS in high CO2 environs than in low ones. It is a comparison of trees and grass at different CO2 levels, it is NOT a comparison of trees and grass to no trees and no grass.

Robert
March 22, 2016 12:40 am

I weep for my country and the fruit cakes we seem to churn out ,once I see the word (model) in a climate paper I see fields of flowers covered in bovine faeces and then the stench hits .
350 culled from the herd just need a couple of thousand more .

seth
Reply to  Robert
March 22, 2016 2:54 am

Models are the only way to investigate a chaotic system. If the word gives you unpleasant olfactory hallucinations, perhaps you should develop an interest in other fields of investigation. Does archaeology interest you? I think there’s less modelling there.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  seth
March 22, 2016 10:05 am

Models are the worst way to investigate a chaotic system. How, exactly, do you capture the chaos and model it? Once you drift off into paramaterization, you don’t have a model anymore, you’ve simply stuffed the computer full of your own biases.

Frank L
Reply to  seth
March 22, 2016 1:26 pm

Wrong answer. Observations are the only way to investigate a chaotic system properly; it’s why models are always regarded as nothing but imagination tests in real science, and direct observations are preferred.
Particularly the atrocious physics of your church’s falsehood riddled computer programs are the objects of outright laughs in peoples’ faces. James Hansen’s old boss used to tell him to his face he was nothing but a pseudo-scientific faker.
Hansen’s fellow employees at N.A.S.A. regarded him as nothing but a charlatan precisely because he argued against solid instrumental data using models he said proved there was a runaway green house gas effect on Venus.
He used his awful modeling – as have many many pseudo scientists through history – to persuade people to simply ignore what their instruments were telling them. Most of the time of course it doesn’t work for long, and this time it won’t work forever – but fake models, and other imagination experiments are long the bread and butter of scientific falsification, and ALWAYS
real instrument records
and
real thermodynamic principles proven before, are preferred.
Your religion is falsified by both: the instruments say clearly your leadership’s models show runaway greenhouse gas effect that IS not THERE.
END of that story except for the alarmism profiteering.

seth
March 22, 2016 at 2:54 am
Models are the only way to investigate a chaotic system. If the word gives you unpleasant olfactory hallucinations, perhaps you should develop an interest in other fields of investigation. Does archaeology interest you? I think there’s less modelling there.

Science or Fiction
March 22, 2016 12:41 am

Anthony – may I suggest that you include a link to the original paper in posts like this.
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23418

Science or Fiction
March 22, 2016 1:21 am

It is depressing to observe how scientists seem loose the grip and use the same terminology for a model experiment as for a real world experiment. Their reservations are very moderate. It would have been more appropriate to refer to their work as virtual reality. What we could have been predicted with certainty, however is the call for more money to play for.
From the paper:
“Five ensembles were run; each initialised a year apart, with the default gs scheme (i.e., the control), and the new scheme (i.e., the experiment). All results shown are for the ensemble mean. We performed statistical significance testing of the differences between the experiment and the control using the student’s- t-test at 95% confidence interval, and tested for field significance using the false discovery rate method. ”
“Nevertheless, some uncertainties remain. First, the data behind this parameterisation are measured at leaf scale; it has not been confirmed that the differences among PFTs observed at this scale also emerge at canopy/ecosystem scale. In light of our results, there is an urgent need for future work which tests how the stomatal parameterisation … scales from the leaf to the canopy/ecosystem.”

seth
Reply to  Science or Fiction
March 22, 2016 2:49 am

Science or Fiction wrote: It is depressing to observe how scientists seem loose the grip and use the same terminology for a model experiment as for a real world experiment.
What is the terminology that you feel makes it unclear?
Science or Fiction wrote: IWhat we could have been predicted with certainty, however is the call for more money to play for.
Almost every paper that reports a possible new finding will say “more research is needed”. It’s not a play for money, it’s an encouragement to other research groups.

Reply to  seth
March 22, 2016 3:47 am

This annoyed me during my PhD, well before I became a sceptic. Model runs being called experiments.
I found that reality is nothing like the models if you purify the starting material thoroughly but got called a fraud for my insight. As far as I know, nobody else has noticed 15 years later.

GregK
March 22, 2016 1:24 am

Kala and his modelling friends are happy to cite this reference….
Huang, J., Yu, H., Guan, X., Wang, G. & Guo, R. Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change. Nature Clim Change 6, 166–171 (2016).
But ignore these….
http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2013/Deserts-greening-from-rising-CO2
https://blogs.csiro.au/ecos/despite-decades-of-deforestation-the-earth-is-getting-greener/
A bit inconvenient

Robert of Ottawa
March 22, 2016 2:08 am

Uh oh. Plants cause global warming.

March 22, 2016 5:47 am

‘According to Dr Kala public good research of this magnitude can only be achieved through the strong institutions Australia has built up over time.’
“These world-first results will have significant impact on the development of climate models around the world…”
“This long term investment in key infrastructure is why Australian science continues to punch above its weight…”
“It’s an investment with many public benefits for us and the rest of the world, that every Australian can be proud of…”
This smells like a desperate job-justification attempt by Australian climastrologists who are nervous about their public sector jobs becoming untenable now that the science is settled and Paris lead to such a ‘strong’ agreement between the world’s policy makers.
I’m curious though; since it’s clear from actual data that there has been no increase in extreme weather (which includes heatwaves) in the last 50 years, I wonder what kinds of plants are they smoking in UNSW before coming up with an utterance such as;
“…these results…help explain why many climate models have consistently underestimated the increase in the intensity of heatwaves…’
Perhaps UNSW has a satellite campus for its school of Biology in Nimbin?

Pat Paulsen
March 22, 2016 5:57 am

Well, we can’t have all those nasty plants polluting the air, now, can we? So, let’s increase the number of cows and sheep to eat that nasty grass. We will all eat meat and totally decry those nasty wheat, oats, barley, corn and other grains, as vociferously as we now do with that evil villain: FAT! The number of wild claims popping up is like playing a game of whack a mole – with really stupid moles, IMO.

Not Chicken Little
March 22, 2016 7:11 am

This reminded me of an observation by Dave Barry, who, if he wanted to, could undoubtedly have a career as a “climate scientist” because he has long been a master of the absurd:
“You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that’s what scientists believe. In fact, many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist’s house on a sultry August day, you’ll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.”

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  Not Chicken Little
March 22, 2016 10:16 am

In this case, Dave Barry is ignorance masquerading as levity. In the typical American home, built anywhere in the last 50 years or so, all combustion air for the fireplace is drawn from the interior of the house. Now back in the day (1960 or so) when my parents’ house was built, insulation was at best an afterthought. Every window was an infiltration point for outside air. So after an evening of drowsing by the fire, when you went upstairs to bed the rooms were like an ice box. In fact, any point of the house beyond 15 feet or so of the fire place was chilly. It didn’t help that the house thermostat was in the living room, as was the fireplace.
So even though Count Rumford taught us how to build proper fireplaces in the late 1700’s, we’ve yet to widely apply his teachings.

dp
March 22, 2016 11:29 am

Maybe these guys need to take a barefoot walk on a SoCal beach on a sunny day where they will discover the grass is very cool and the sand is very hot. The color of light reflected from grass as a result does not energize CO2 or water vapor nearly as much as the heat boiling off the sand.

March 22, 2016 3:25 pm

This has got to be near breaking point. It amazes me the level of Stupid our ‘scientists’ aspire to. Even the Desperate must be drawn to question occasionally.