Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I see that there’s a new post up on WUWT claiming that eeevil humans are responsible for the increase in earth’s energy imbalance, which is denoted as ∆EEI in their paper. (The delta, “∆”, means “change in”.) The underlying paper discussed in the post is entitled Anthropogenic forcing and response yield observed positive trend in Earth’s energy imbalance
What do they base this claim of anthropogenic forcing on? Curiously, it’s not the usual claim that it’s due to CO2 absorbing more longwave. Instead, according to their press release, the cause is that:
…we are receiving the same amount of sunlight but reflecting back less, because increased greenhouse gases cause cloud cover changes, less aerosols in the air to reflect sunlight — that is, cleaner air over the U.S. and Europe — and sea-ice decreases.”
I’ve NEVER heard the claim that increased greenhouse gases cause “cloud changes”. How would they possibly know that?
Well, the same way they claim to know everything in their paper—haruspicy, except they use computer models instead of animals. They examine the entrails of climate models, and they compare them to the CERES and other satellite datasets. Color me unimpressed.
In any case, let’s take a closer look at their claims. They are correct that the CERES satellite dataset does indeed show an increasing imbalance. We can start by looking at the relative size of the imbalance. Figure 1 shows the actual size of the changes in incoming and outgoing energy, the two energy fluxes that are compared to give us the changes in Earth’s Energy Imbalance (∆EEI).
Figure 1. The earth receives and radiates about 240 watts per square meter (W/m2)on a globally averaged 24/7 basis.
As you can see, the change is quite small. It’s far less than one percent of the fluxes themselves.
Uncertainty
So … given the tiny size of the imbalance compared to the underlying energy fluxes, can the CERES dataset even be used for this question? As you might imagine, this question has been studied. From here we find:
However, the absolute accuracy requirement necessary to quantify Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) is daunting. The EEI is a small residual of TOA flux terms on the order of 340 W m−2. EEI ranges between 0.5 and 1 W m−2 (von Schuckmann et al. 2016), roughly 0.15% of the total incoming and outgoing radiation at the TOA.
Given that the absolute uncertainty in solar irradiance alone is 0.13 W m−2 (Kopp and Lean 2011), constraining EEI to 50% of its mean (~0.25 W m−2) requires that the observed total outgoing radiation is known to be 0.2 W m−2, or 0.06%. The actual uncertainty for CERES resulting from calibration alone is 1% SW and 0.75% LW radiation [one standard deviation (1σ)], which corresponds to 2 W m−2, or 0.6% of the total TOA outgoing radiation. In addition, there are uncertainties resulting from radiance-to-flux conversion and time interpolation.
With the most recent CERES edition-4 instrument calibration improvements, the net imbalance from the standard CERES data products is approximately 4.3 W m−2, much larger than the expected EEI. This imbalance is problematic in applications that use ERB data for climate model evaluation, estimations of Earth’s annual global mean energy budget, and studies that infer meridional heat transports.
So that is the uncertainty in the imbalance … ± 4.3 W/m2. Makes determining the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) energy imbalance somewhat problematic, given that it is less than 1 W/m2 …
Then there’s the question of drift. Over time, satellites shift slightly in their orbits, instruments age, and reported values drift slowly over time. Basically, the authors of the paper just shine this on, in the following fashion:
Although there is excellent agreement between the individual satellites CERES derives its data from, there is, however, the potential for systematic errors associated with the observed trend due to instrument drift. We attach an estimate of 0.20 Wm−2decade−1 (assuming a normal distribution) to CERES trends, based on best realistic appraisals of observational uncertainty (N. Loeb, CERES Science Project Lead, personal communication)
Call me skeptical, but I find that far less than satisfying … seems to me that the CERES dataset is not at all fit for looking for the purpose of diagnosing trends of less than half a W/m2 per decade in the residual difference of two large values.
Data
Setting that large uncertainty aside, let’s look at the two datasets that make up the EEI. These are the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing longwave and incoming solar radiation. I often use “breakpoint analysis” to investigate what is going on. There’s a description of the breakpoint analysis functions that I use here. Figure 2 shows the breakpoint analysis of the outgoing longwave.
Figure 2. Breakpoint analysis, TOA longwave radiation. Blue lines show individual trends of sections of the data, yellow line shows the overall trend.
Now, this is interesting. Outgoing longwave runs basically level up until about 2015 (plus or minus about half a year), when there is a shift upwards combined with a rapidly increasing trend.
Why? I can’t guarantee that nobody knows … but that is certainly my belief. We can speculate, but cause and effect in the climate system are like sand in your hands …
How about the incoming solar? Figure 3 shows that result.
Figure 3. Breakpoint analysis, TOA solar (shortwave) radiation. Blue lines show individual trends of sections of the data, yellow line shows the overall trend.
This one is a bit more complex. Initially, incoming solar was increasing rapidly. Then it went level, followed by an upwards jump around 2015 (the same time as the jump in the longwave).
Why would the solar and the longwave fluxes both have breakpoints at the start of 2015? It may be related to the large 2015-2016 El Nino/La Nina … or it may not be related, given that there are more Nino/Nina alternations during the period of record, and given that the El Nino peak is not until the very end of 2015. It may be due to a change in instrumentation. Again, a very elusive question.
We can take a couple of other kinds of looks at the energy imbalance. First, here’s a graph showing both incoming and outgoing energy, along with LOWESS smooths of the two datasets.
Figure 4. Same datasets as in Figure 1 but at a different scale, including LOWESS smooths of both datasets.
This is curious. At times the incoming and outgoing radiation fluxes move in harmony, and at other times they move in opposition. In particular, they move in harmony after the breakpoints in 2015. At a minimum, we can say that we are looking at some complex processes in both cases …
Finally, here’s the difference between the LOWESS smooths, which give the actual changes in the TOA earth energy imbalance (∆EEI). Figure 5 shows those changes.
Figure 5. Earth’s Energy Imbalance, March 2000 – February 2021
Now, this is most interesting. The imbalance starts out at about 0.4 W/m2. Shortly thereafter, it drops to half of that amount. It then goes up, down, and back up to 1.2 W/m2 … before rapidly dropping all the way back to 0.2 W/m2. Then it jumps all the way back up to 1.2 W/m2, wanders around for a bit, goes up to a peak at 1.4 W/m2 … and then drops all the way down to about 0.4 W/m2. So it ends up right about where it started.
I’m sorry, but anyone claiming to see a “human fingerprint” in Figure 5 has curious fingers.
Let me close with a map showing the complexity of the overall energy imbalance.
Figure 6. Energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, on a 1°latitude by 1° longitude basis.
Some things of note. The numbers involved are very large. In the tropics, there is much more solar energy entering the system than longwave energy leaving the system. The opposite is true near the poles, where far less solar energy enters the system than longwave energy leaving the system. This is an indication of the “advection”, the huge constantly ongoing horizontal movement of sensible and latent heat from the tropics to the poles. In addition, the ocean generally receives more solar energy than it loses in longwave, and the reverse is true for the land. This difference is visible, for example, around the Mediterranean.
Me, I find it highly unlikely that our instruments can determine the overall total of that to the nearest tenth of a watt per square meter … yes, that’s the answer we get, but the slightest error, the slightest drift in the system, the slightest shift in the line of zero imbalance, and we’d be out by much more than the imbalance itself, much less the even smaller change in the imbalance.
My best regards to everyone,
w.
Nota Bene: PLEASE quote the exact words that you are discussing. This makes it clear who and what you are talking about, which avoids much misunderstanding.
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The authors seem to have a very high level of confidence that an event that has happened previously without human influence could not happen again except as the result of human influence. Where is their EVIDENCE? When did natural variability cease?
“Enquiring minds want to know.”
It was when Kevin Trenberth said that for the sake of the children and the children’s children, Science needs a new null hypothesis. One that doesn’t make him look like the scientific dufus he is/was.
Unless Trenberth has joined the ranks of the metabolically challenged, I’m pretty certain he is still a scientific dufus.
He’s chief of hepatoscopy, which says everything wrong is because CO2.
More like scatoscopy.
The paper referred to here is being grossly misrepresented by it’s author in the Urea Alert presser.
What they found was a <1% chance it was natual variability ALONE. That is something anyone reasonably objective realised about 40 years ago.
It’s a mix of anthro and natural. The question is how much. The do seem to address that in the slightest.
is.
He hasn’t retired yet? That’s sad – for him, as well as the rest of the world.
“I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not for our children’s children, because I don’t think children should be having sex.”
Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey
What kind of peers have peer-reviewed that piece of s**t?
Probably three friends from the “Action on Climate Now” rally.
The Joe Isuzu kind.
pals
aw, don’t be so hard on Mr. Eschenbach … or WUWT for that matter!
Peer review has no place on this blog!
I think you misunderstood the comment from Joao Martins.
WE discusses a peer-reviewed paper not worth the paper printed on.
Look yet another new sock puppet pos troll!
Griff by any other name is just another CCP paid troll, lurking in a dark room and posting inane and disruptive comments.
This site is all about peer review. Everything posted here gets more and better actual peer review than does anything published in the so called “respectable” journals.
Make a mistake of any kind, and you will hear about it quickly.
Finally someone who understands the true meaning of peer review in the context of science. Journal publishers were never figured into the concept of peer review … and so they shouldn’t, since their contribution [sic] is filled with self interest. Who said they were qualified to choose the “peers” doing the reviewing?
The money they make says it all!!
And extorting those funds from mostly publicly funded universities is how they make their money.
And I believe that a previous post here at WUWT shows all that money is going to a German based corporation.
Exactly. The publishing business isn’t some benevolent association with high ethical standards, nor do they really care about scientific standards.
The peer reviews are at the bottom of the referenced paper. I’ve never read one before, but there seem to be a great many serious issues that were raised. You can read them here:
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-021-24544-4/MediaObjects/41467_2021_24544_MOESM2_ESM.pdf
You can also read the authors’ response to each of the reviewer comments in that same document. In light of the fact that the paper has been published, we can safely assume that the reviewers were satisfied with the responses.
For most of them, having the author’s merely proclaim that the objections are groundless, are sufficient for any pro-AGW paper.
Thank you, but I had already read them. I am a retired researcher, I know very well the rituals and liturgies of the job.
Natural variability ceased at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution — by definition!
When did humans lose their membership in the natural world, I wonder.
When they got religion.
LOL … lucky me. I’m still natural.
akin to the first measurements of systematic hemisphere covering Southern polar ozone measurements and the observation of the famous Ozone hole. The data series started in 1979, and by the early 1980’s they decided it must be due to CFCs.They assumed it was a unique event even though no previous (historical data) measurements existed to compare it to to determine uniqueness.
Actually the data series started in 1957 which is what the BAS based their observation of the occurrence of an ozone hole.
Ed,
The claim being made is not that natural variability has ceased but rather that it is not large enough to explain the effect. Two very different things.
The claim being made can’t be supported by anyone who understands metrology.
Messieurs Raghuraman, Paynter and Ramaswamy would be well served to take a course in the Theory of Measurements and Uncertainty. They would then realize, as WE tries to explain, that their conclusions are unsupportable with the systematic uncertainties of the data and methods they use. To claim they can, is as Willis points out, merely a divination.
Joel O. Could not agree more, The failure of modern “science” researchers to properly evaluate and report “Measurement Uncertainty” in their publications is inexcusable. Peer review should flag and reject such papers automatically. As Willis noted, even the CERCES MU is obscured by reporting only the 1 sigma (standard deviation) value. Proper application of the ISO GUM requires stating a confidence level (usually 95% or 2 times sigma) when reporting a measurement or calculated result. Of course doing so would mean that most scientific papers cannot actually support the claims made. Hence the “replication crisis” rages on.
It always amazes me how statistical analysis of a distribution of data can allow these climate scientists to claim more accuracy and precision than are containted within the original PHYSICAL measurements. I would not rely on their claims if my life depended upon their analysis for anything physical, i.e. bridges, buildings, brakes, etc.
That would seem to require demonstrating the variability of today has not been matched in the past, which seems somewhat unlikely.
so you mean, the natural variablty decreased since industrial revolution, because the natural changes in climate before were so small.
OK, is an idea, an exclusive from you as usual 😀
The incoming solar is varying 0.5 to 1 W/m2 from year to year, and we’re supposed to freak out about about 0.8 W/m2 over a couple of decades? The natural range in values was over 6W/m2 over the date range.
An easily refutable claim.
Given the fact that most of the last 10,000 years has been much warmer than it is today. Without any help from the magic gas.
‘Make it up Mark’ making stuff up. Its probably warmer now than at any period of the Holocene.
Loydo
You are the one making things up
It really is sad how Loydo rejects any facts that don’t conform to his religious convictions.
Forgot about the fact that the permafrost in the Arctic tundra is still frozen, huh Loy?
“Earth’s energy imbalance” is natural. It’s always in flux or we wouldn’t have climate variations. No warm or cold periods or extremes (to man) are fleeting at best. It’s a fools errand to believe man can change it.
It’s a bigger fool’s errand to believe man can control it.
As I said in the other thread, hubris is not a positive character trait.
Because of the elliptical orbit the ISR swings 90 W/m^2 from perihelion to aphelion.
Because of the tilted axis a point ToA sees 700 W/m^2 swing from summer to winter.
0.8 W/m^2 is not a measurable quantity.
And that orbit has NEVER tracked the same path around the sun with the same obliquity and precession. Every single year is different.
The whole assessment above actually excludes the insolation at the top of the atmosphere. It only considers what gets past the clouds as if clouds do not play a role in the energy balance.
Great post as ever Willis. Thank you.
“I’ve NEVER heard the claim that increased greenhouse gases cause “cloud changes”. How would they possibly know that?”
I might be wrong but – a robust consensus of the voices in their collective heads?
Having said that though, is there good data for natural cloud variation in the ENSO region?
Not WE, but the answer in re EEI is no, and not just in the ENSO region. The problem is that the cloud impact on EEI isn’t just cloudiness. It depends on the type of cloud, it’s altitude (because of lapse rate), and it’s optical depth. For example, high thin cirrus actually warms (contributing to EEI) because the ice crystals are transparent to sunlight but opaque to IR.
and most important time of day/night
Are you sure about ice crystals being transparent to sunlight? This graph would lead one to assume that H2O absorbs readily in the near IR range of sunlight.
I’m trying to figure out how increased CO2 caused a decrease in aerosols.
If it’s “bad,” the CO2 must have done it.
What’s really going to fry your brain later is when you start thinking about how aerosols that they blamed for the cooling “scare” (i.e., the “dog ate my homework” excuse for the reverse correlation between CO2 and temperature during that period) and which was a serious fly in the ointment for the ridiculous notion that atmospheric CO2 drives the climate could have been so high in the face of rising CO2 levels (and rising from a lower concentration, meaning its imagined “effects” should have been larger than now if anything) that they could have “cancelled” the CO2 warming AND caused cooling to boot – since CO2 now supposedly causes a decrease in aerosols.
Oh what tangled webs they weave…
In sorting out the rather awkward sentence structure, it seems the two elements have just happened over the same time period rather than there being a causal relationship. Maybe.
I guess “peer review” doesn’t cover poor English.
Direction of causality arrow is uncertain, and in a tightly coupled system, feedbacks can make the causality circular.
Water is a radiative gas, liquid and solid in the atmosphere. More of it inevitably leads to more cloud – the liquid and solid phases specifically. When total atmospheric water exceeds 45mm it is a surface cooling agent because it then generates cyclic instability. Where atmospheric water is less than 45mm it is a surface warming agent primarily reducing the radiating temperature with less impact on ground level insolation.
The Climastrologist’s brains are unbalanced.
Now you’re giving them too much credit. They lack brains, and rent some computer time as a substitute instead.
An emptiness can’t be unbalanced. 😀
Mr. Eschenbach, Thank you for the quick response to the article. Very interesting.
I would emphasize that they have not addressed the classic issue of calculating the difference between two large, relatively noisy measurements. Since the average difference between the measurement pairs is smaller than the noise in each measurement, on an observation-by-observation basis the time-series of the differences will mimic a random number generator.
So, instead of looking at the difference between your smoothed lines, the pseudo-randomness of the differences might be well demonstrated by calculating the differences between each observational pair (incoming vs outgoing) in the time-series. Is that possible with the data you have?
…we are receiving the same amount of sunlight but reflecting back less, because increased greenhouse gases cause cloud cover changes, less aerosols in the air to reflect sunlight — that is, cleaner air over the U.S. and Europe —
So, is cleaner air a bad thing now?
I guess their prescription should be to build coal fired power plants as fast as possible, to “save us” from global warming. LMAO.
Oh, and no pollution controls, of course. We need the maximum aerosol output per plant!
Forest wildfires are producing plenty of aerosols from western USA and Canada. Also from the Northeast.
Click on Windy, Windy and you can follow the plumes. You can pick out coal fired power plants from their plumes of NO2. If you are really interested in meteorology, this is a site to use.
Thanks for the reference, new site on my favorites.
Here in SW Utah, we had rain for hours yesterday with almost no wind, even during this years “monsoon” season. Isolated lightning but no actual “thunderstorm” type of activity.
The Windy Windy site shows the lack of wind over almost all of the great basin and our area, just outside of the great basin. Heck, almost no wind for the whole of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast, from Mexico to Canada. I wonder what % of the nameplate rating the bird choppers are producing in the western states.
Not a problem, China and India are doing that as we speak!!
According to griff, if humans are causing it, then the answer is “Yes!”
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-07-21-trolls-need-kind-words-the-most?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Interesting article, thank you for posting it.
Do we all need to be kinder to griff, Loydo, etc.? Will it help?
It might make them feel better.
I don’t see how CliSciFi can let this paper stand. It contradicts all the alarmist talking points.
It would interesting to know if anyone has ever actually managed to measure a decreased albedo due to lowered sea ice levels.
It would have to be total albedo, not just the amount of light scattered back towards the light source. The way most “albedo” measurements are taken.
Since the Sun hits the water at/near the poles at such an extreme angle anyway, most of it will still be reflected. The Climate Crackpots seem to think the sea ice is in the tropics.
High angle reflection off water causes far more albido. The water is practically silver, like a mirror, while ice still reads as white due to its irregularity.
To be done properly, one would need the BRDF of snow and ice, and calculate the hemispherical scattering, integrated (daily, or preferably hourly) over the Summer season, when there is sunlight present, for all latitudes. Then, add to that the specular reflection of the open water as the ratio between pack ice and open water changes through the Summer.
Strictly speaking, as albedo is defined, it does not capture either the forward reflected specular reflection or the forward lobe of diffuse reflectance of snow. The BRDF for snow will show an increase in the forward lobe intensity as the solar angle of incidence increases (sun lower on the horizon), but will never achieve 100% as with glancing reflectance off water.
It is not a trivial exercise, but shouldn’t be out of the question for those with a budget to use supercomputers. It would be good training for a grad’ student!
WE, a speculation about your observed breakpoint ‘causality’. There doesn’t have to be one. EEI is just one ‘output’ of a nonlinear dynamic climate system. (For the technically minded, nonlinear just means there exist disproportionate feedbacks, dynamic just means those feedbacks can time lag.) All such systems are mathematically chaotic. And that means they will contain ‘spontaneous’ bifurcations, meaning suddenly flipping from one state to another for no ‘obvious’ reason. That is just one of several hallmarks of a mathematically chaotic system. (Others better known popularly include sensitive dependence on initial conditions (Ed Lorenz initial ‘weather model’ discovery) and strange attractors in N minus one space (Lorenz’ two node ‘butterfly’ attractors)).
Lends a ‘known’ (in chaos theory, not in practice) mathematical system uncertainty beyond any of the CERES metric uncertainties you note.
Thanks, Rud, good to hear from you as always. You are 100% correct. There doesn’t have to be any obvious causality for a complex interconnected system to switch from one state to another. And it does add additional uncertainty.
My best to you and yours,
w.
Honest questions, because I really don’t know.
Are we receiving the same amount of sunlight over time? Since I assume that sun spots and solar flares temporarily change the amount of light received, does the amount of energy change or is it just a shift of spectrum? Is the measurement of lumens equal to energy received? How much energy is absorbed by the atmosphere and things in the atmosphere?
Same amount of sunlight only in visible light, not in UV spectrum where the quantity changes a lot during solar cycles. And UV is quiet important for atmospheric behaviour
The UV is a very small part of the total energy, so although it changes a lot, it’s like say your fingernail length changing a lot—it still won’t make a significant difference in your weight.
w.
Willis, Krishna is correct in observing that while the change in UV energy is small, because it is photochemically more powerful than VIS, it has a greater impact, such as in heating the ozonosphere and the production of ozone. I don’t think that the UV increase should be dismissed so lightly, if you’ll pardon the pun.
The result of changing UV radiation in the thermosphere
is not to trivialise
The reason that I dismiss it is that despite looking at every study I can find, I have never found any evidence that the sunspot-related variations in solar output have any effect on weather down here on the ground where we live.
Yes, sunspot variations do affect the thermosphere … but the thermosphere has so few atoms that satellites orbit within the thermosphere and it basically doesn’t affect their orbits. It has so few atoms that it won’t even carry sound.
Now, if Krishna has any evidence that UV changes affect weather at the surface, now is the time to break it out …
w.
Are cold winters in Europe associated with lowsolar activity ?
Abstract
Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the startof the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of lowsolar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continentalEurope.
Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possibleconnection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending theCentral England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemispheremean temperature.
We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur morecommonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on theoccurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic.
We stress that this is a regionaland seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activityhas declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return toMaunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010Proc. R. Soc.A466303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK andEurope could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.
Drivers of North Atlantic Polar Front jet stream variability
To the end is the part about UV radiation etc
Thanks, Krishna. The only reference in there to surface weather is Lockwood et al., “Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?“. I’d start with the first rule of headlines, which is:
I mean, if they could actually have demonstrated the connection, the title wouldn’t be a question …
In any case, here’s how they treat the winter data:
They’ve taken the data, applied some unknown adjustments for UHI, extended modern data back to 1659 by using reconstructions from the known liars Michael Mann and Phil Jones, and you expect me to take this seriously? Really? This is your idea of science???
Don’t make me laugh …
w.
Regional climate impacts of a possible future grand solar minimum
Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected anthropogenic warming. However, variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance is linked to modulation of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, suggesting the potential for larger regional surface climate effects.
Here, we explore possible impacts through two experiments designed to bracket uncertainty in ultraviolet irradiance in a scenario in which future solar activity decreases to Maunder Minimum-like conditions by 2050.
Both experiments show regional structure in the wintertime response, resembling the North Atlantic Oscillation, with enhanced relative cooling over northern Eurasia and the eastern United States.
For a high-end decline in solar ultraviolet irradiance, the impact on winter northern European surface temperatures over the late twenty-first century could be a significant fraction of the difference in climate change between plausible AR5 scenarios of greenhouse gas concentrations.
“Possible future”, “likely”, “potential for”, “bracket uncertainty”, “scenario”, climate models called “experiments”, “could be”, “significant fraction”, “plausible”, “scenarios” …
I suppose they could have been more vague, but I’m not sure how.
Can I tell you how truly boring I find all this pseudo-scientific mathturbation to be?
w.
The amount of energy we receive from the sun changes in sync with the sunspot cycles. But the change is very small. On a global 24/7 basis it’s about 0.3 W/m2.
w.
“With the most recent CERES edition-4 instrument calibration improvements, the net imbalance from the standard CERES data products is approximately 4.3 W m−2, much larger than the expected EEI.”
Willis: “So that is the uncertainty in the imbalance … ± 4.3 W/m2″
Aren’t they saying that the 4.3 number IS the imbalance–not the uncertainty in the imbalance.
We know that the imbalance isn’t 4.3 W/m2, because we’d see it in some combination of temperature increase and ocean heat content. So it must be the uncertainty.
w.
So you are saying that we are looking for millimeters of difference using 1,000 meter tape measures?
Be careful not to confuse accuracy with precision.
Particularly when the graduations are in meters.
At this point all “climate science” speculation on clouds is futile, since we already know it is all based on erroneous logics. Before this has been corrected and “digested”, with all the serious implications it has, modelling climate or cloud feedback specifically, is a fools game.
Again, this is about what the GHE looks like in reality..
The theoretical part to the problem can be learned here..
https://greenhousedefect.com/the-beast-under-the-bed-part-1
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/the-beast-under-the-bed-part-2
And the empiric evidence, at least part of it, is to be found here
https://greenhousedefect.com/the-cloud-mess-part-2-something-spooky
and here..
https://greenhousedefect.com/the-cloud-mess-part-2-data-data-data
I am glad to hear that this so called imbalance is smaller than the level of uncertainty in the measurement. I.E. that there is no evidence that it really exists.
I am glad, because such an imbalance can not persist. It corrects itself in relatively short order.
these people are starting to sound like cold fusion promoters. calculate the energy balance wrong, and that must be proof of fusion. what, you don’t measure enough neutrons. it must be a heretofore unknown nuclear process where the incredibly slow atomic processes prevent the known astoundingly fast nuclear process from occurring. (hint, the fast stuff is done long before the slow stuff is effected by the change.) they didn’t want to admit the old claims were nonsense, so they kept making up new nonsensical claims to deflect from being wrong.
“I am glad to hear that this so called imbalance is smaller than the level of uncertainty in the measurement. I.E. that there is no evidence that it really exists.”
Yes, and yet the authors wrote a whole paper on it, knowing the uncertainties make their conclusions a guess at best.
And the publication editor accepted it as a submission and their pal reviewers approved it for publication.
Peer reviewed, the GOLD standard of “science”.
Haruspicy is a great term.
I am increasingly of the belief that most modern scientists in cutting edge fields aren’t much different than the alchemists of the 12th century: they mix real stuff with griffon feathers, animal dung and what not in the belief that this half-assed mix is actually based on science.
HAR’USPICY, noun Divination by the inspection of victims. Webster 1828 Websters Dictionary 1828 – Webster’s Dictionary 1828 – Haruspicy
HAR-u-spicy? – Say it with a pirate accent.
Specifically divination by reading entrails. The first part is cognate with hernia, the second with scope.
The Greek equivalent is more specific, using the word for liver, hepatoskopia.
You learn something new every day around here. 🙂
And as per the father in the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, EVERYTHING comes from the Greek!
Thank you Willis. I assumed they were making a claim the data could not possibly support (pretty much the norm with government & university research) but I was too lazy to try to do the work to probe it.
After all the “climate change” and COVID lies I just assume anything they say is false.
“Well, the same way they claim to know everything in their paper—haruspicy, except they use computer models instead of animals. They examine the entrails of climate models, and they compare them to the CERES and other satellite datasets. Color me unimpressed.”
Willis, thank for adding a new word to my vocabulary: haruspicy. Haruspicy and computer modelling in the climate field probably work about equally well. LOL.
We can call it “CliSciFi Haruspicy.” We never again need to use “UN IPCC CliSciFi GCMs.”
‘In addition, the ocean generally receives more solar energy than it loses in longwave’
And much of solar energy received by the oceans is absorbed at depth, to be released to the atmosphere at a later time. However the lag time between energy absorption by the oceans and its release to the atmosphere can be decades, i.e. much longer than the time frame of the analysis presented here.
In other words the implicit assumption, that the system is at steady state, which is necessary for any comparison between incoming and outgoing radiation to be meaningful, is highly unlikely. To make a meaningful comparison would require averaging the incoming and outgoing radiation over time-frames that substantially exceed the period for which data is available.
Averages do hide things. There is no doubt about that. Relying on averages when the uncertainty is high is what mathematicians do to make the answer look good. That’s like designing a bridge for the average weight of all vehicles using it rather than the largest load that will cross it. Weight limits? Who ever heard of such a thing?
Willis, Great work. Great analysis. Thank you.
More effort by more unbiased, “question-asking” people like yourself — true scientists — need to be asking these same, and many more, such good questions (some of which I raise below).
From my own physical science training it is clear that the most likely pattern of radiative energy imbalance ( + or – ) over time (for any given small solid angle of the sphere) is one the fluctuates so significantly over the course of an hour, a day, a week, a month or a year, that any attempt at measuring that imbalance from a single satellite, or a few dozen of them uniformly spaced around the earth all measuring simultaneously, cannot be more accurate than about 1% with regard to the outgoing energy as summed (integrated) over the sphere — even if the measuring instrument is 0.1% accurate in absolute magnitude of Watts per unit solid angle on each such satellite — when summed across all the satellites concurrently measuring their portion of the sphere. Overlaps, pointing errors, calibration drifts and a myriad of other technical complications prevent accuracy at the level required to make such claims.
While measuring the variation in the incoming energy may seem much easier — with the sun as the presumed only relevant single source for 0.1% accuracy — achieving that accuracy is made difficult due to large portion of solar energy in blue, ultraviolet, and higher energy photons, which fluctuate and scatter more. Even though much of that never reaches the earth’s surface or lower troposphere, it would affect the the estimated “net imbalance” as measured by satellites high above the stratosphere.
Willis, excellent and thoughtful analysis (as usual) but what you need to realize is that these buffoons started with the premise “There’s no way this could be natural” and worked their way backwards from there attempting to provide some convoluted justification for their preconceived conclusion.
Headline produced, propaganda campaign advanced, message repeated, hype inflated, mission accomplished. They’re not doing “science,” they’re just more deluded activists promoting the “human induced catastrophe” nonsense.
That is called the “ruling theory” error, i.e. collecting data to support an hypothesis rather than running an experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis.
We were lectured about the “ruling theory” mistake during college (undergraduate) science education a long time ago. Very basic. What the H is being taught now? The mere use of numbers and computers does not make it science regardless of the complexity of the alleged argument. Reminds me of the “hockey stick illusion”!
What do they base this claim of anthropogenic forcing on?
What is earth’s in-out IR flux supposed to look like in the absence of greenhouse warming? Rough or smooth – how much variation and on what scales? Is there a null hypothesis to compare against? I think not.
What would be nice would be a control planet without anthropogenic greenhouse gas input. Maybe Venus? How “smooth” is the time plot of intensity of IR in/out supposed to be? How much structure – on what scales?
Why? I can’t guarantee that nobody knows
random variation seems most likely given the size of the flux relative to the size of the trend difference
people hear voices in static because the unconscious brain does a similarly mindless pattern-searching exercise
haruspicy
Its a dirty job, but somebody has to do it! Out damn spots!
Willis, I am glad you take such pleasure in amassing evidence of their unutterable wrongness!
Cleaner air causes energy imbalance?
Notice the shift of language from Global Warming -> Climate Change -> Energy Imbalance?
Thanks for this Willis. It is important to show that anyone who claims an imbalance, without data logic or reasoning (or even trying to define their terms), probably has their thumb (at least) on the scale.