Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) definition of climate change was drafted so the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could direct the focus to CO2. It was equally important to prevent disclosure that natural variation in water vapor (WV) far exceeds the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It likely exceeds it in total and certainly more than any human-induced increase in CO2. IPCC displayed duplicity when they ignored WV until it became necessary to maintain demonization of CO2.
The 2007 IPCC Report explains why the human production of WV is insignificant to their work.
“Water vapour is the most abundant and important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour.”
Look at the vagueness. They can’t define “small” in the direct human portion or even its actual volume. They can’t even compare it with the natural variability in the total amount of atmospheric WV? In 2002 a NOAA article said
“The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is about 13 x 1015 kg.”
What is “about”? Natural variation in total atmospheric WV is the greatest for any gas and especially for any greenhouse gas. WV ranges from almost zero in polar regions to four percent in the tropics. It is also extremely difficult to measure. Does a two percent variation in WV equal the human production of CO2 effect? Historically, the only meaningful measures began with satellite derived Microwave Measurements that determine the absolute amount dissolved in a column of air.
Interestingly, in 2007, two years before Climategate, a paper titled “Identification of human-induced changes in atmospheric moisture content” appeared using this type of measure. In the article, they use the notorious phrase lead author Ben Santer introduced when, as lead author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC Report, he rewrote portions of his committee’s text. The agreed sentence
“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
Santer’s insertion.
“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence (my bold) on the global climate.”
In the 2007 paper the phrase (in bold) that the media picked up, as Fred Singer predicted, was repeated.
‘‘Fingerprint’’ studies, which seek to identify the causes of recent climate change, involve rigorous statistical comparisons of modeled and observed climate change patterns (1). Such work has been influential in shaping the ‘‘discernible human influence’’ conclusions of national and international scientific assessments (2–4).
The 2007 article conclusion conflicts with the latest IPCC Report Technical Summary of Working Group I.
The magnitude of the observed global change in tropospheric water vapour of about 3.5% in the past 40 years is consistent with the observed temperature change of about 0.5°C during the same period, and the relative humidity has stayed approximately constant. The water vapour change can be attributed to human influence with medium confidence (My bold: IPCC definition is “About 5 out of 10 chance”)
How does the natural variation in greenhouse effect of WV compare with the effect of human produced CO2 or even CO2 in total? They don’t know. They can’t answer any of these questions because adequate data does not exist.
The magnitude of the WV greenhouse effect is large. Ken Gregory notes that,
An analysis of NASA satellite data shows that water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, has declined in the upper atmosphere causing a cooling effect that is 16 times greater than the warming effect from man-made greenhouse gas emissions during the period 1990 to 2001.
This indicates that the question about the warming effect of CO2 is more than offset by what can be described as the evaporative cooling of the upper atmosphere by WV.
The IPCC chose to protect their claims about CO2. The response was forced because evidence showed that an upper limit to the warming effect of CO2 contradicted their anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (Figure 1).
Figure 1
There was disagreement about the amount, but the differences were small. One of the first graphs to show this appeared on Junkscience in 2006 (Figure 1). The IPCC decided that WV provided the explanation. It is like the frequent use of aerosols to cover contradictions.
They followed Santer et al., 2007 paper with further justification. A 2008 NASA article titled “Water Vapor Confirmed a Major Player in Climate Change” says,
Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.
In fact, it has not been debated. The article sounds like a promising approach to the necessary questions about global warming and accurate determination of the role of water vapor. It isn’t. The article confirms this in an ill-informed public relations article.
Climate models have estimated the strength of water vapor feedback, but until now the record of water vapor data was not sophisticated enough to provide a comprehensive view of at how water vapor responds to changes in Earth’s surface temperature. That’s because instruments on the ground and previous space-based could not measure water vapor at all altitudes in Earth’s troposphere — the layer of the atmosphere that extends from Earth’s surface to about 10 miles in altitude.
The article tries to justify the IPCC hypothesis that a positive feedback mechanism exists to make CO2 more effective as a warming agent by using WV.
This led to the ongoing debate about climate sensitivity as estimates declined (Figure 2).
Figure 2
This diverts from the question of how much a variation in atmospheric water vapor affects global temperature and how that compares with the CO2 effect. It is critical as the IPCC explains.
The latent heat contained in water vapour in the atmosphere is critical to driving the circulation of the atmosphere on scales ranging from individual thunderstorms to the global circulation of the atmosphere.
Remember that because of grid size, their computer models cannot include the approximately 10,000 thunderstorms operating at any given moment. They can’t even include the stratocumulus in Figure 4 each transferring heat.
Figure 4; Illustrates the sensitivity of water vapor to temperature with clouds forming from evapotranspiration and condensation over forests, but not over relatively cooler rivers.
But these types of vague, unsubstantiated claims litter the IPCC Reports making them defy logic and common sense. A brief analysis determines the illogic of their claims. The latest (2014) Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers says,
Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.
Highest in history? It depends on how you define history. All climate change has had widespread impacts, not just recent.
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.
This is unequivocally false. The observed changes are not unprecedented.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever.
There is no evidence to support these claims. Besides, the increase is a false increase because the “economic and population growth” drivers are created by the IPCC with their Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). The physical data doesn’t exist or has a wide margin of error making such statements untenable, as other portions of the IPCC Reports that few read, show.
One part of the IPCC claims that change due to human activities became evident after 1950. Another part, that there is virtually no data before 1950. The inadequacy of the water vapor data alone proves this claim false.
For example, The Technical Summary of Working Group I says (my added bold),
Confidence in precipitation change averaged over global land areas is low (About 2 out of 10 chance) prior to 1951 and medium afterwards because of insufficient data, particularly in the earlier part of the record.
substantial ambiguity and therefore low confidence remains in the observations of global-scale cloud variability and trends.
The spatial patterns of the salinity trends, mean salinity and the mean distribution of evaporation minus precipitation are all similar (TFE.1, Figure 1). These similarities provide indirect evidence that the pattern of evaporation minus precipitation over the oceans has been enhanced since the 1950s (medium confidence). Uncertainties in currently available surface fluxes prevent the flux products from being reliably used to identify trends in the regional or global distribution of evaporation or precipitation over the oceans on the time scale of the observed salinity changes since the 1950s.
The most recent and most comprehensive analyses of river runoff do not support the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) conclusion that global runoff has increased during the 20th century. New results also indicate that the AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in droughts since the 1970s are no longer supported.
There is low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall), owing to lack of direct observations, dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice and geographical inconsistencies in the trends.
In several periods characterized by high atmospheric CO2 concentrations, there is medium confidence (50%) that global mean temperature was significantly above pre-industrial level.
Anthropogenic emissions have driven the changes in well-mixed greenhouse gas (WMGHG) concentrations during the Industrial Era (see Section TS.2.8 and TFE.7). As historical WMGHG concentrations since the pre-industrial are well known based on direct measurements and ice core records, and WMGHG radiative properties are also well known, the computation of RF due to concentration changes provides tightly constrained values.
The problem is CO2 is not well-mixed as the OCO2 satellite data indicates.
Before you even get to say, ”It’s the Sun stupid” you can say, “It’s the water vapor stupid.”
Two comments provide a context for the IPCC scientific tunnel vision on water vapor.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963).
A few observations and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
Alexis Carrel (Surgeon, Biologist 1873-1944).
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IPCC has used science to prove that it is CO2 alone, which has caused the global warming. If this is not true, the opponents must show, what is wrong in the IPCC’s science. That is what I have done. The study is published here: Ollila, Antero. (2014). The potency of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas. Development in Earth Science 2: 20-30.
The Transient Climate Sensitivity (TCS) is the simplest way in comparing different warming calculations. According to the IPCC’s model, TCS can be calculated by multiplying the Radiative Forcing (RF) value of CO2 by the Climate Sensitivity Parameter (CSP): TCR = 0.5 (K/(W/m2) * 3.71 W/m2 = 1.85 K.
According to my research paper, the values of CSP and RF are not correct. I have used three different calculation bases, which give essentially the same results: energy balance calculations by pen and paper, spectral analysis technique in calculating the infrared radiation absorption in the atmosphere, and the changes in outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere (= the original specification of the climate sensitivity). The results are that CSP is 0.27 K/(W/2) and TCR is 0.6 K. In these calculations the absolute humidity of the atmosphere is constant.
It is a common practice to calculate the RF of CO2 according to the equation of Myhre et al.: RF = 5.35*ln(C/280) but my calculations show that this equation should be RF = 3.12*ln(C/280). Therefore the TCR = 0.27*2.16 = 0.58 K. The CSP value of 0.5 K/(W/m2) comes from the assumption that the relative humidity of the atmosphere is constant. My explanation for the difference in calculating the RF value is also humidity. If the Myhre’s calculations were carried out in the atmosphere of the constant relative humidity, it would explain the difference. So the water vapour is the key element in the AGW theory. The strength of water as a GH gas is about 15 times stronger than CO2.
In Figure 2 is depicted the values of CS according to some research studies. During the recent years many studies are published showing the TCS values around from 1.1 to 1.2 K. I have noticed that the researchers have used the RF value of 3.71 W/m2 in these studies. What I have not noticed: a single study checking the correctness of the RF equation of Myhre et al.
Neither CO2 nor H2O heat anything at all.
H2O is supposedly the most effective greenhouse (heating) gas.
The hottest places on Earth – such as the Libya desert – are characterised by a distinct lack of this so-called greenhouse (heating) gas. It seems, the less greenhouse gas, the hotter it gets.
Foolish Warmists.
Cheers.
Nick Stokes wrote –
“The usual calculation is that the imbalance is just equal to the rate of heat accumulation in the oceans. There is really nowhere else for the heat to go.”
Ah, the missing heat. The usual nonsensical calculation, backed by no end of amateurish computer games, says the heat has gone into hiding.
Easier, and physically believable (given the impossibility of accumulating heat, particularly in the form of abyssal water, which cannot be heated from the surface), is that the foolish Warmist usual calculation is garbage.
Foolish Warmists (as opposed to rational Warmists, who believe rising temperatures result from thermometers being exposed to increased heat,) can’t accept that the Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years. No missing heat. It left the system, never to be seen again. All nicely accounted for.
Oh well. Keep on pushing the magical heating effects of CO2. Maybe a foolish Warmist will even propose a falsifiable hypothesis proposing a mechanism to explain the planet heating properties of gases. I doubt it.
Cheers.
Well, water vapour is just as much a smokescreen as any of the other so-called greenhouse gases, in order to blind us to seeing the forest = atmosphere for an abundance of trees = man-made greenhouse gases, in order to overlook the energy account for the Earth’s atmosphere as a whole — which would open the Pandora box of the whole AGW fraud. I have collected what I could find behind all the IPCC smokescreens here:
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/idiot-guide-to-global-warming.html
and here
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/moonshine-is-blinding.html
Back in the late 1980’s, I visited a nature reserve near Palm Springs, CA. One of the guides mentioned that due to all the golf courses and swimming pool putting water vapor into the air, there had been a noticeable shift in vegetation in the areas around and down wind of Palm Springs.
I read another article from the Las Vegas, NV area that stated that because of the growth in population, there were so many swamp coolers in the valley, that they were adding enough humidity to the atmosphere that swamp coolers were starting to become less effective.
FerdEgb 7/19/2016 @ur momisugly 1:57l am says,
Sorry Jeff, human emissions are of the same order (~9 GtC/year) and larger than the year by year natural variability (+/- 3 GtC), …
Your comparison is analogous to comparing the speed of an automobile with the distance it traveled, or the volume of stuff into a bucket with the rate of flow of stuff into or out of the bucket. Your comparison is dimensionally challenged.
And where is the year-by-year natural variability you quote published?
Continuing your same sentence, you say,
they are not absorbed instantly as about 1/3 of the emissions …
Where did you get the idea of instant absorption? If this is a response to me, you’ve’ made another dimensional goof. What I said was CO2 added to the atmosphere was absorbed instantly on climate scales, not instantly on some meaningless absolute scale.
Continuing,
since 1850 still are measurable in the atmosphere as a huge drop in δ13C ratio, completely in lockstep with human emissions, despite the huge (seasonal) exchanges between the reservoirs.
No valid human fingerprints of any sort exist in climatology. In particular, IPCC describes the synchronicity in the δ13C ratio is described in AR4, Figure 2.3, p. 138, and discussed by me on my blog, rocketscientistsjournal.com. But you can see for yourself on page 10 of
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf
The chart allegedly shows two fingerprints. Part (a) compares the rising concentration of CO2 from Mauna Loa to the decline in concentration of atmospheric oxygen. IPCC claims this shows that the increase in CO2 is from combustion, that is, from fossil fuel burning. Part (b) compares the measured δ13C ratio to the estimate of fossil fuel emissions. IPCC says of all this,
Later observations of parallel trends in the atmospheric abundances of the 13CO2 isotope (Francey and Farquhar, 1982) and molecular oxygen (O2) (Keeling and Shertz, 1992; Bender et al., 1996) uniquely identified this rise in CO2 with fossil fuel burning (Sections 2.3, 7.1 and 7.3). AR4, ¶1.3.1 The Human Fingerprint on Greenhouse Gases, p. 100.
As you will see in Figure 2.3, the records appear parallel because of the way the charts are drawn. IPCC compared the records by drawing them separately on left and right ordinates, scaled relatively by an offset and a scale factor. All this is to give the appearance of parallel records where none exists. Any pair of records can be made to appear parallel and similar in variation by this technique known in science as chartjunk. For such reasons as this, one must read IPCC reports with a much heightened degree of skepticism.
In the very next sentence you say,
Henry’s law shows an increase of 4-17 ppmv/K in the literature.
Saying some fact is in the literature is not providing a source. Where can someone read what you claim to have been published?
You continue,
Ice cores show 16 ppmv/K over the past 800,000 years and similar changes between the MWP and LIA. Thus the rise in temperature since the LIA is good for maximum 13 ppmv of the 110 ppmv measured…
Ice cores record certain atmospheric variables averaged over the closure time, that is, the time for the firn to freeze into a solid. Closure time as you know easily runs from several decades to multiple centuries. Consequently, the ice core records are low pass filters with an extremely long time constant. A phenomenon like the record for temperature since thermometers, like much of the Industrial Era, cannot be resolved in ice core records. Most importantly, the ice core reduction shows that CO2 and temperature appear synchronized, with CO2 lagging temperature by many centuries, and approaching about one millennium. In the past million years, Earth may have undergone many events like that in the reconstructed MLO record, but they would not be resolvable in ice core data.
I gave you a source for the THC/MOC/Great Conveyor Belt to have a mass flow rate of as much as 50 Sv. I gave you solubility numbers, coefficients of solubility for CO2 in water easily found online or in engineering handbooks. I came up with an upper estimate of 740 GtC/y of CO2 due to that current. That is a mass flow analysis never reported by IPCC. It yields the number that you can compare to 8 or 9 GtC/y from human emissions. Human emissions at one percent or so are lost in the noise. Did you check my work?
As I mentioned, the term ThermoHaline Circulation (THC) is a misnomer. Similarly, someone changed the name of the Calendar Effect to the GreenHouse Effect (GHE), a misnomer because a greenhouse traps air preventing convection. Similarly, saying that CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming is a misnomer because CO2 is not a heat source. Thermodynamics requires a heat source, or more generally work, to produce warming. CO2 does not cause warming, but prevents cooling by residting radiation. As George Simpson told Guy Calendar in 1938,
… it was not sufficiently realised … that it was impossible to solve the problem of the temperature distribution in the atmosphere by working out the radiation.
IPCC has spent billions validating George Simpson’s knowledge.
In addition, nothing, including CO2, traps heat because heat is energy in transit. Once the transit stops, heat is gone. Stated correctly, i.e., according to physics, CO2 acts like a blanket. It prevents cooling by acting as a resistance to heat. Heat doesn’t even appear in the Kiehl & Trenberth radiation model, the basis for IPCC’s hysteria. See IPCC’s first FAQ, Figure 1. Preventing cooling may seem like warming to the tyro, but not to a someone trained in thermodynamics or careful with his language.
However, that misunderstanding of physics is not the reason for the observation that increasing atmospheric CO2 does not cause Earth’s surface temperature to rise. That comes from the fact that temperature leads the rise in CO2. That is evident in the ice core records, and comports with the theory from physics. It is not evident in the MLO record, in part because what passes for the record is a reconstruction, not data. The lead/lag relationship does not exist in the modern record because the climatologists in charge of the record are not even aware of the requirement to show causality. Until they conduct a suitable experiment, the world is stuck with their ice core record and physics.
I’m already wondering what kind of spin CAGW will put on this subject if we happen to get a close to zero growth rate or even negative. One means all the anthropogenic co2 produced for that year was sunk, and the other it was all sunk and some of what was already there. Next couple of years should be interesting.
Jeff:
Your comparison is analogous to comparing the speed of an automobile with the distance it traveled
Sorry, human emissions are +9GtC/year one way. Natural variability is the result of all inputs together (~150 GtC/year) and all outputs together (~154.5 GtC/year) or -4.5 +/- 3 GtC/year. That is the net result of all natural carbon movements within any year. All have the same dimensions…
If you take the integral of both human and natural it gets to ~370 GtC total human input, ~190 GtC accumulated in the atmosphere and ~180 +/- 3 GtC accumulated in natural sinks.
The variability didn’t change over time (at least not since 1959) and averages out to zero in 1-3 years.
And where is the year-by-year natural variability you quote published?
Download the Mauna Loa data, download the emissions data and subtract them from each other. Look at the variability over the past 57 years…
absorbed instantly on climate scales
160 years of human emissions is beyond climatic scale, which is by definition 30 years. Here the graph of the δ13C measurements compared to what it schould be if all human CO2 remained in the atmosphere. With a deep ocean – atmosphere exchange of ~40 GtC/year, the dilution of the human “fingerprint” is explained. The same 40 GtC/year deep ocean exchange was found for the higher decay if the 14C bomb spike:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
No valid human fingerprints of any sort exist in climatology.
The above graph does only prove that the drop δ13C is human, if there are no other sources of low-13C involved. Neither the oceans, volcanoes, carbonate rock weathering have low 13C levels. Only vegetation decay and fossil fuel burning has. Vegetation is a proven sink for CO2, at least since 1990, preferentially of 12CO2, thus enriching the relative 13C/12C ratio and thus not the cause of the δ13C decline. Only humans are to blame…
Regardless of the presentation by the IPCC, that is clear proof of the human contribution. That is confirmed by a parallel decrease in δ13C in coralline sponges, which live in shallow waters and build their calcite skeleton at the same 13C/12C ratio as the surrounding waters:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
Where can someone read what you claim to have been published?
See e.g.:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/CO2/carbondioxide/text/LMG06_8_data_report.doc
calculation of the pCO2 at the inlet temperature from the temperature at the equilibrium equipment:
(pCO2)sw @ur momisugly Tin situ = (pCO2)sw @ur momisugly Teq x EXP[0.0423 x (Tin-situ – Teq)]
which is about 16 ppmv/K around 15°C
Earth may have undergone many events like that in the reconstructed MLO record, but they would not be resolvable in ice core data.
You underestimate the ice core records: even the worst resolution ice core records will show the current increase over the past 160 years, be it with a lower amplitude – depending of the (future) duration. The average 55 ppmv current increase over 160 years would show up in the 800,000 years Dome C record as a peak of 15 ppmv if it ended today or 30 ppmv if it declined as fast as it increased or 110 ppmv if the current maximum was sustained over 560 years.
The repeatability of the ice core measurements is about 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma) for multiple samples of the same part of one ice core or 5 ppmv maximum difference between ice cores of extreme different accumulation rates and average temperature for the same average inclused gas age.
I came up with an upper estimate of 740 GtC/y of CO2 due to that current.
Jeff, I didn’t check you work on that point, because that mass of CO2 is completely irrelevant: as long as it doesn’t exchange with the atmosphere, it simply comes up with the waters near the equator and sinks again with the waters near the poles without changing the atmospheric CO2 content.
Of course there is exchange, as the warming up of the cold deep ocean waters expell a lot of CO2, as the pCO2 of the oceans is much higher than of the atmosphere. On the other side, the cooling waters absorb a lot of CO2 and take that with them into the deep to return some 1,000 years later at the upwelling zones near the equator. How much: some 40 GtC/year in and out as proven by the δ13C and 14C spike declines.
This 40 GtC/year doesn’t add or subtract one gram of CO2 to/from the atmosphere, as long as sources and sinks are in equilibrium. Currenly that is more sink than source, confirmed by over 2 million measurements of seawater pCO2:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtm
That comes from the fact that temperature leads the rise in CO2.
Except over the past 160 years (ice core resolution ~20 years CO2 lag MWP-LIA ~50 years):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
MWP – LIA: – 8 ppmv
LIA – current: +110 ppmv
WMP was warmer than LIA?
It is not evident in the MLO record, in part because what passes for the record is a reconstruction, not data.
Jeff, the influence of temperature on CO2 levels is not more than 16 ppmv/K that is all. 13 ppmv since the depth of the LIA. The rest of the 110 ppmv increase is NOT from any temperature influence…
The raw, unchanged data for several stations are (were? Link is changed) on line, so that you can plot whatever data you want. All what they do is cleaning the data from known deviations like volcanic vents and other disturbances (or reconstruct them from a hard disk crash…) before calculating daily to monthly averages. If you plot the raw data or the “cleaned” data, that makes less than 0.1 ppmv over a year, which is simply transported to the next year. Here for Mauna Loa and the South Pole (2008):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
“(My bold: IPCC definition is “About 5 out of 10 chance”)”
Do you mean that in the multiverse, this is true in 5 out of 10 plans of existence?
Otherwise, what does “chance” mean?
Even during TV poker tournaments, I tend to question the epistemology of these comments about “chances” of the opponents having some hand. And you can play many turns and do statistics. You have only one Earth climate system.
Re: Nick Stokes, 7/19/2016 @ur momisugly 5:35 pm.
Nick’s chart is IPCC, Climate Change 2013, The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers, p. 12, Figure SPM.5. IPCC says,
Figure SPM.5 | Radiative forcing estimates in 2011 relative to 1750 and aggregated uncertainties for the main drivers of climate change.
And IPCC’s AR5 Glossary includes this:
Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as … .
Accordingly, the chart divides emissions and drivers into two categories, Anthropogenic and Natural. In the Natural category it has just one variable: Changes in solar irradiance. Consequently, it omits natural changes in cloud cover, water vapor, albedo, and CO2 flux, even though these are dependent on surface temperature, where
in HadCRUT4 the trend is 0.04ºC per decade over 1998–2012, compared to 0.11ºC per decade over 1951–2012. AR5, Box 9.2, p. 769.
Meanwhile, Figure SPM.5 covers Total Anthropogenic RF relative to 1750 in three bars going back to 1950. The chart has albedo change, but only anthropogenic due to land use Land Use. It has Cloud Adjustments, but only anthropogenic from aerosols. IPCC knows full well that humidity increases with surface temperature:
Clausius–Clapeyron equation/relationship The thermodynamic relationship between small changes in temperature and vapour pressure in an equilibrium system with condensed phases present. For trace gases such as water vapour, this relation gives the increase in equilibrium (or saturation) water vapour pressure per unit change in air temperature. AR5, Glossary, p. 1450.
Do not worry that the definition is too restrictive for the climate, which is never in equilibrium. Clausius-Clapeyron appears in seven chapters of AR5 a total of 20 times. IPCC even quantifies it:
In summary, radiosonde, GPS and satellite observations of tropospheric water vapour indicate very likely increases at near global scales since the 1970s occurring at a rate that is generally consistent with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation (about 7% per degree Celsius) and the observed increase in atmospheric temperature. AR5, §2.5.5.4, p. 208.
In AR4, IPCC had relied on increased water vapor to amplify the greenhouse effect initiated by man’s CO2 emissions:
Water vapour in the middle and upper troposphere accounts for a large part of the atmospheric greenhouse effect and is believed to be an important amplifier of climate change. Citation deleted, AR4, ¶3.4.2.1 Surface and Lower-Tropospheric Water Vapour, p. 273.
and
The diagnosis of global radiative feedbacks allows better understanding of the spread of equilibrium climate sensitivity estimates among current GCMs. In the idealised situation that the climate response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 consisted of a uniform temperature change only, with no feedbacks operating (but allowing for the enhanced radiative cooling resulting from the temperature increase), the global warming from GCMs would be around 1.2°C. The water vapour feedback, operating alone on top of this, would at least double the response. The water vapour feedback is, however, closely related to the lapse rate feedback, and the two combined result in a feedback parameter of approximately 1 W m–2 °C–1, corresponding to an amplification of the basic temperature response by approximately 50%. The surface albedo feedback amplifies the basic response by about 10%, and the cloud feedback does so by 10 to 50% depending on the GCM. Note, however, that because of the inherently nonlinear nature of the response to feedbacks, the final impact on sensitivity is not simply the sum of these responses. The effect of multiple positive feedbacks is that they mutually amplify each other’s impact on climate sensitivity. Footnote, citations deleted, 4AR, ¶8.6.2.3 What Explains the Current Spread in Models’ Climate Sensitivity Estimates?, pp. 631-2.
When a phenomenon increases anthropogenic warming, IPCC includes it. When it is the result of competing natural responses, IPCC ignores it. IPCC treats Clausius-Clapeyron as if it were anthropogenic. Like all subjective matters, this is arbitrary and destroys IPCC’s scientific credibility. Chart SPM.5 has a column for Level of confidence with encouraging entries for all 11 rows. The confidence of a real scientist in IPCC work has to be negative.
Nick Stoke’s posting of Figure SPM.5 is to champion junk.
Re: FerdiEgb, 7/20/2016 @ur momisugly 1:35 pm.
Ferd’s diagram from WoodForTrees.org is a classic. It’s an example of how to get published in faux science journals. Figures like that are everyday occurrences in finance and economics. But in science, where data are precious, one handles data with kid gloves. As the state of an art progresses, all the low hanging fruit is quickly picked, and scientists continue working ever closer to and deeper within the noise. One never, never differentiates, or equivalently takes differences, of data records. It destroys signal and amplifies noise, butchering signal-to-noise ratio. It obliterates features in the data by which one might detect relationships like especially lead/lag. Means disappear. Ramps become new means. It renders prediction, and with it detection and regulation, predictably impossible. Such a treatment is a quick test for analytic incompetence, and a signal to teach or steer clear.
Taking differences destroys first order effects. Then seeing someone try to replace the trends he destroyed by differencing with linear trendlines in the differentials is laughable. Almost every data set has a regression line, whether or not it is meaningful. But the frosting on the cake is to see someone draw conclusions from artifactual trendlines.
Jeff,
You simply have things reverse: I never ever used the variability of the CO2 rate of change as proof that humans are not to blame for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, but temperature is. That was done by Dr. Salby, Bart and in this discussion by rishrac. Looking at the noise around the trend in rate of change indeed is a bad idea, as one in first instance has largely removed the real signal by taking the derivatives.
Indeed temperature variability is the main driver for CO2 rate of change variability, but has very little influence on the trend, both in rate of change and total CO2.
If one looks at the real signal, it is clear that temperature is not the driving force for the CO2 increase and total human emissions clearly are:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
The 21 year moving average was added, because someone used that to show that temperature was responsible for the CO2 increase since 1980 (!).
Re: Ferdinand Engelbeen, 7/21/2016 @ur momisugly 5:58 am.
Ferd,
As respectfully as possible, I disagree. First, you never use anything as proof that humans are not to blame for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, but temperature is. You seem be firmly convinced in the validity in of the AGW conjecture. You hold with that point of view even when AGW has been demonstrated invalid (i.e., measured Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, its only testable prediction, is at no more than the 3% confidence level given by the model) and even when atmospheric accumulation of CO2 is contrary to physics. Henry’s Law regulates the concentration of atmospheric CO2, a fact IPCC would sacrifice its political objective to recognize, to say nothing of its loss of face.
Second, your chart is highly problematic. The CumEmiss in blue is likely human emissions and not total emissions. I posted a little analysis above showing that human emissions could be as small as 1% of just the THC emissions (using the published upper limit of 50Sv), and asked you to check my work. The readers are still waiting for your answer.
Regardless, whether your CumEmiss is meant to be from man cannot be verified because emissions are measured in GtC (e.g., ~9 GtC/year, FerdiEgb, 7/19/2016 @ur momisugly 1:57 am), and neither ordinate is in GtC to be charted. (You can deduce an equivalence between atmospheric CO2 in ppmv and in atmospheric GtC. You may not assume that emissions from any source measured in GtC are equivalent to atmospheric concentration until you show all those emissions remain in the atmosphere. On climate scales, no CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere.)
So for two reasons, one must ignore your blue line. Now if you redraw your chart, changing the left ordinate, CO2, from 0 and 200 ppmv to 0 to 100 ppmv, you’ll get rid of half a chart of wasted space at the top which is artificially flattening your CO2 curve. Do so and you’ll find the red CO2 line rising much faster than either of your two temperature lines.
This criticism is not proof contrary to AGW. That conjecture cannot be demonstrated either way from such diagrams. The value of your chart is to show the lack of science in analysis by chartjunk.
Jeff,
I didn’t answer on the radiation or ECS, as I am convinced that the climate models are completely wrong on that point. But that is not the point of discussion, the point of discussion is the cause of the CO2 increase, which is one of the few points where the IPCC is right…
when atmospheric accumulation of CO2 is contrary to physics. Henry’s Law regulates the concentration of atmospheric CO2
Ultimately all our emissions will end up in the deep oceans (and coal at a slower pace), but what you completely underestimate is the time frame: the proven e-fold decay rate of any CO2 impulse in the atmosphere is in the order of ~52 years. Too slow to remove all human emissions in the same year as emitted. That is what causes the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is a simple, first order process and completely in line with the physics of pushing a gas in a liquid at extreme low pressure differences (0.0001 bar above equilibrium). We are not talking about carbonated drinks where they need 6-7 bar CO2 pressure to push sufficient gas in a thin film (a few mm) of liquid over a large area in a few minutes…
human emissions could be as small as 1% of just the THC emissions
It seems difficult to convince you that the carbon in all its derivatives (only 1% free CO2 involved in gas exchanges) in the THC has very little influence on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, In short:
– The amount of C in any reservoir has not the slightest influence on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, as long as there is no exchange.
– The exchange of C between reservoirs has not the slightest influence on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, as long as incoming and outgoing C fluxes are equal.
That is the case for the THC. No matter the amounts in the deep oceans, no matter how much circulates between the surface and the depth, that has zero influence on the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Only the difference between what gets into the atmosphere from the warming up of upwelling waters and what goes down in the cold polar waters is what matters: currently 3 GtC/year more sink than source. The THC and thus the deep oceans are a net sink for CO2, no matter how much CO2 is circulating with it.
Over the past 800,000 years temperature dictated CO2 levels, mainly by the ocean – atmosphere exchanges. The CO2 levels changed with temperature with 16 ppmv/K, nothing more. For each increase in temperature, more CO2 is released at the warm side and less absorbed at the cold side of the THC. That increases the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, until influx and outflux are equal again. That is the case when the atmospheric CO2 increase reaches 16 ppmv per K temperature increase. The same extra CO2 level for the highly dynamic ocean system as for a single ocean water sample per Henry’s law… Currently the atmospheric pressure is 110 μatm above the equilibrium between ocean surface and atmosphere for the average surface temperature. Thus more CO2 is pushed into the oceans than released…
Thus indeed the blue line is total human emissions for the simple reason that the sum of all other fluxes is a net sink, no matter how any individual flux halved or doubled, changed from a net sink into a net source or reverse… At least in the past 57 years, nature was every year a net sink that couldn’t absorb all human emissions of that year, thus that accumulates in the atmosphere. The chart only shows that with a remarkable constant ratio between total human emissions and increase in the atmosphere (which is BTW just coincidence caused by the slightly quadratic increase in emissions over time and the linear response of the sinks to increased CO2 pressure).
BTW, as CO2 is a minor component of the atmosphere, it is easy to convert GtC into ppmv CO2, as the total mass of the atmosphere hardly changes with more CO2. The conversion factor I use is 1 ppmv = 2.13 GtC.