General AGW discussion thread [Archive] - Page 7

Klausnh

2009-Jun-25, 05:07 PM

update: Pierce et al

"Comparing the
observations with results from two coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models (PCM and
HadCM3) that include anthropogenic forcing shows remarkable agreement between the
observed and model-estimated warming."

I can show a remarkable correlation between the rise in the price of stamps and global SST's too.
Nowhere in the paper is there any proposed mechanism for downwelling IR radiation to heat the ocean. There is simply an assumption that it must, in order to save the models.
Also there is no discussion of the effect the 30 year positive trend in the natural oceanic cycles, particularly in the S.E. Pacific and the Atlantic would have had on the results.

These two natural cyclic variations can account for most of the warming of the last 30 years.
Take account of the El Chichon and Pinatubo erruptions, and the case becomes even more obvious.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/has-global-warming-accelerated.html

One interesting thing which does come out of the paper, is that Pierce et al observe that the ocean is emitting 2.2W/M^2 more than atthe start of their time period. How does this square with the mechanism posited by Gavin et al that increased downwelling IR caused by the co2 increase inhibits energy release from the oceans?

Considering what the oceanographer said, and that the oceans have more than 1000 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere, is it not more likely that the oceans increased heat emittance accounts for 2.2W/M^2 of the 3.7W/m^2 increase they claim is observed in the downward flux of IR, the balance being accounted for by heightened solar activity and the increase in co2 among other natural variables?

This would seem more likely than the atmospheric tail wagging the >1000 times larger oceanic dog.from tisdale:

If we assume the Atlantic Ocean surface area is approximately 30% of the global ocean surface area, and assume the North Atlantic represented 50% of the Atlantic, the North Atlantic SST anomaly data can be scaled by a factor of 0.15 and subtracted from the Global SST data.
Doesn't that assume that temperatures are the same in all the oceans?

Stroller

2009-Jun-25, 05:19 PM

from tisdale:

Doesn't that assume that temperatures are the same in all the oceans?
I think you need to remember global SST data is expressed as an anomaly too. So what is being discussed is departures from longer term averages in each ocean basin, not absolute temperatures.

I doubt if Bob Tisdale would try to claim all his methods for getting a handle on what's going on in the world's ocean basins are perfect, but that they are sufficiently accurate and relevant to be useful in seeing the bigger picture.

Given the uncertainties in historic SST data due to changes in measurement methods etc, I'd agree with him.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-25, 05:45 PM

GIStemp's anomaly for africa Vs satellite data from UAH

Why not use the RSS satilite data instead? Could it be because the RSS stailtie data shows an even higher warmign trend then the GISS or HadCRU land station data?

Stroller

2009-Jun-25, 06:07 PM

Why not use the RSS satilite data instead? Could it be because the RSS stailtie data shows an even higher warmign trend then the GISS or HadCRU land station data?

I don't have RSS data isolated for Africa, and I bet you don't either.but what I can show is that you are incorrect for global data over the 1979 -2009 period RSS has been operating.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/trend

lomiller1

2009-Jun-25, 08:15 PM

It’s incorrect to say that either RSS or UAH has been “operating since 1979”. They use the same raw satellite data, and that data goes back to 1979.

They do crunch the data differently, but RSS definitely has more credibility given the debacle back in 2000 where UAH claimed there had been no warming at all only to have the RSS guys point out that was the result of a simple algebra error on the part of UAH.

Tamino has some good detail articles on them

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/rss-and-uah/

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/annual-cycle-in-uah-tlt/

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/whats-up-with-that/

Stroller

2009-Jun-25, 11:35 PM

They do crunch the data differently, but RSS definitely has more credibility given the debacle back in 2000 where UAH claimed there had been no warming at all only to have the RSS guys point out that was the result of a simple algebra error on the part of UAH.

The UAH and RSS teams have helped each other on occasion and thus has been possible because they are open about their methods.

I wish the same were true of GISTEMP and HADcru. Phil Jones has resisted all attempts under the freedom of information act in the UK. He said something like:

"Why would I give you my 25 years of data when you'll only try to find something wrong with it?"

Quite.

Not very scientific.

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jun-26, 12:03 AM

Depending on the baseline of your average, your observation and William's are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Baseline is the average for 1961-1990

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 01:06 AM

1979 - 2009 trends in degrees C per decade

GISS: 0.159
HADCRUT: 0.159
RSS: 0.157
UAH: 0.128

And decadal trends since 2000

GISS: 0.102
HADCRUT: .0007
RSS: 0.0002
UAH: 0.0028

William

2009-Jun-26, 01:49 AM

A trend of global cooling that happens for a long enough period of time that we can be sure it isn't like any of the previous shorter-term periods of cooling that I have pointed out to you many times in the past would be a start.

At one point I pointed out to you in a graph that you used to show the earth had been cooling over the past few years that there was a range of time that was the same size during which the earth was apparently warming by a truly astounding rate. (It turned out that was just another wiggle, too.) Tell me, if you had been looking at graphs 10 years ago, during that period, instead of now, would you be stocking up on air conditioned underpants?

Nauthiz, Let's assume for one New York minute that you are incorrect and the planet is about to abruptly cool. I doubt if you remember the winter of 1971 and 1972 in Vancouver.

The North Shore of Vancouver gets 44 inches of rain. With a current average winter January temperature of 3.4C. Now as the planet cools there will be 10 to 12 feet of snow in that area. You have no idea what the means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkhfHZrNd5o&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMyH_hbSX5o&feature=related

Years or months with snowfall surpassing 100 cm (39.3 in) are not completely exceptional. Snowfall exceeding 100 cm occurred twice during the 1990s, and, in January 1972 alone, there was more than 120 cm (47.2 in) of snow. The snowiest year on record at Vancouver International Airport was 1971, which received a total of 242.6 cm (95.5 in), and the greatest snow depth reported was 61 cm (24 in) on January 15 of that year.

The most recent White Christmas occurred in 2008 after weeks of record breaking cold temperatures and four consecutive snow storms left over 60 cm of snow on the ground across Metro Vancouver. New snow also accumulated on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day giving it the title for Canada's whitest Christmas in 2008 with 41 cm on ground (48 cm at one point on Christmas Eve). Snow was also measured in the preceding year of 2007 where 1 cm was observed in the Vancouver International Airport. The previous official White Christmas occurred in 1998 when 20 cm of snow was on the ground on Christmas Day following 31 cm of snow and 20 mm of rain, 1996, and 1991.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-26, 06:21 AM

Nice cherry pick.

Lets go back a year and look again:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti...rom:2007/trend
You're missing the point, as usual. I highlighted the ongoing trend because William is claiming that the Earth is experiencing a global cooling currently. However, temperature records show that the Earth has been warming since the beginning of 2008. That can be seen from your graph as well. Placing a linear trendline over a non-linear trend is not indicative of anything.

Or if we want to get away from annual/biannual swings how about the last 12 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah...m:1997.5/trend

Is 12 years still 'just weather' ?
If you want to view the situation of global climate, then why limit to 12 years and use monthly means? Let's look back 150 years and use 10 year means:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1850/mean:120/plot/rss/from:1850/mean:120/plot/gistemp/from:1850/mean:120/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:120

Or better yet, 30 year means:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1850/mean:360/plot/rss/from:1850/mean:360/plot/gistemp/from:1850/mean:360/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/mean:360

Repeating the same unsupported nonsense doesn't make science either.
I gave you link to the paper, how is that "unsupported"? Citing results of a scientific paper is not science?

Bob tisdale shows very clearly how the more frequent el nino's during the 30 year long positive phase of the PDO have affected global temperature:
Tisdale's stuff is only about showing cute graphs where there is some natural variation over general warming trend caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Graphs are cherry-picked so that only those that best seem to support the "step change hypothesis" are shown. Where are the research papers on the subject?

Any putative effect of co2 on ocean temperature is dwarfed by natural variation as Gavin himself admits. As we have seen, ocean heat content is a function of insolation and cloud cover not co2.
No. What we have seen is you noticing some comments in a denialist blog which you then decided to copy here. You then admitted that you have no idea what is the current thinking on the subject, but went ahead claiming that the AGW effect is not sufficient to warm the oceans. You have been told and shown that radiative forcing is not considered to be the most prominent effect transferring the heat from the atmosphere to the ocean, but you practically ignore those, and continue to present your claims unchanged. You also claimed that you have done paper search on the subject. On that, you have done very bad work. There are hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of papers relating to the subject. Here are a few (including one textbook of the subject):

Air-sea bulk transfer coefficients in diabatic conditions - Kondo (1975) (http://www.springerlink.com/content/x91335j1822p5184/)

Bulk Parameterization of Air-Sea Exchanges of Heat and Water Vapor Including the Molecular Constraints at the Interface - Liu et al. (1979) (http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&issn=1520-0469&volume=036&issue=09&page=1722&ct=1)

Advective Ocean–Atmosphere Interaction: An Analytical Stochastic Model with Implications for Decadal Variability - Saravanan & McWilliams (1998) (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.57.3613&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Air-sea interaction - Csanady (2001) (http://books.google.com/books?id=HNZHmrZ0Yu8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0)

Bulk Parameterization of Air–Sea Fluxes: Updates and Verification for the COARE Algorithm - Fairall et al. (2003) (http://mirabeli.meteo.furg.br/aulas/MeteoPG/2006/fluxos/Fairall%20et%20al%202003.pdf)

Mechanisms controlling net air-sea heatflux
over the Southern Ocean - Czaja & Marshall (2006) (http://www-paoc.mit.edu/paoc/papers/southern_ocean_heating.pdf)

Already in 1992, air-sea interaction was included in climate models:
Tropical air-sea interaction in general circulation models - Neelin et al. (1992) (http://www.springerlink.com/content/p474750t10m73511/)

I included the last paper because you claimed that Pierce et al. assumed that there is a mechanism for radiative heating. I asked you to show where they make that assumption, which you obviously ignored because they don't make such an assumption anywhere, you just claimed they do. Another entry to the long list of false things you have tried to pass as facts here. First, like it has been said, radiative heating is not the most prominent mechanism. Second, Pierce et al. are using climate models, which have the heat transfer mechanisms built in, as shown above.

By the way Ari, this 'denialist blog' is science blog of the year. It polled around 4 times the number of votes realclimate got. Not that this proves anything, except perhaps that Joe public has got wise to the global warming hoax.
The sole purpose of the blog you keep citing is to spread confusion about climate science and agitate conspiracy theories involving climate scientists. It's a pseudoscience blog.

If you have any specific criticisms of the data presented on that blog, be specific about them. Just damning it as a 'denialist blog' makes you look a bit bombastic and silly.
I have previously made specific criticisms on the blogs by your heroes. Curiously enough, after I had shown that the methods in those blogs are not scientific, you ignored the specific criticisms. Time and time again these blogs are found out to spread false information, so it is just waste of time to read them and try to extract any possible correct stuff, as there doesn't seem to be any. Probability to waste your time to rubbish is very high in these blogs you keep citing. It's also curious that you seem to be ultra-critical towards any research methods climate science uses, but then any method is good enough if it comes from these denialist blogs.

I don't think William or I can be accused of making any predictions about the future on the multi-decadal scale the IPCC, NSIDC, BBC, NOAA, Big Jim Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, and Stephen Schneider et al have.
So, William's claims about Earth entering into an ice age are probably not multi-decadal then?

Plus the fact that the 1900-2000 'global warming' period is a huge cherry pick anyway, from the bottom of a la nina dominated phase when solar energy accumulation had been declining for 100 years to the peak of an el nino dominated phase when solar activity had been increasing for 70 years to a several thousand year high.
It has been shown that the Sun or the oscillations have not been causing the warming of the last century (Lean & Rind (2008) (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf), see especially figure 2).

mugaliens

2009-Jun-26, 06:46 AM

The North Shore of Vancouver gets 44 inches of rain. With a current average winter January temperature of 3.4C. Now as the planet cools there will be 10 to 12 feet of snow in that area. You have no idea what the means.

LOL! It means that either those in Vancouver will learn to deal with the snow as do other people around the globe, or they'll just sit there.

Perhaps Vancouver will become the telecommuting capital of the world!

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jun-26, 06:46 AM

Nauthiz, Let's assume for one New York minute that you are in correct and the planet is about to abruptly cool.
This is one of the most egregious misinterpretations I've seen in a long time.

It's plain and simple lying about what another member is saying to make your point and it is not an acceptable discussion method. Do it again and you'll be suspended.

mugaliens

2009-Jun-26, 07:17 AM

The hottest year on record was 2005 followed by 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006.

Yet... 1979 2009 trends in degrees C per decade

GISS: 0.159
HADCRUT: 0.159
RSS: 0.157
UAH: 0.128

Massive change, there, for the "hottest" trend on record. I'm not impressed, Ronald.

Biochar combats global warming because the plants biochar (or just plain char) is made from absorb carbon from the air. Char is mostly carbon and is ploughed into the soil to improve soil quality. It can remain in soil for very long periods of time. Since there are many farmers willing to pay for char to plough into soil it is probably one of the cheaper ways of sequestering carbon.

Biochar won't do squat for global warming. It's impact will be less than the waves created by a dog lapping the waters of the Atlantic ocean.

I've yet to see definative evidence that our current global "warming" trend is due to manmade CO2, and not contrails, changes in ocean currents, or a fluctuation in the properties of the Local Interstellar Cloud through which we're travelling which may be influencing any number of atmospheric events here in Earth, in turn helping to raise or lower the Earth's temperature.

And I have looked! Hard! Most recently over the last six months, including throughout each and every one of the 14 IPCC TPs, Special Reports, and Synthesis Report I dowloaded from their site a few months back:

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d185/mugaliens/GWDocs.jpg

I have looked, but I have not found it, not there in the IPCC documents, nor on the several hundred papers, articles, and websites I've reviewed over the last decade.

What I've found instead is an impressive faith in the AGW principle combined with an earily familiar close-mindedness to the possibility of flaws in the current thinking - very reminiscent of a pattern of behavior common throughout mankind, both currently and anthropologically evidenced as endemic to our species.

I am not saying the AGW beliefs are unfounded. They're well-founded on an abundance of information. Unfortunately, the evidence is both inconclusive, and evidence to the contrary exists which is ignored, hushed, shushed, booed, and banned.

When this happens, it's no longer science. Politics, faith, informed beliefs - the human phenomenon that it is goes by many terms, but it's lost its objective, scientific edge, having devolved into a very few informed opinions which cascade into little more than mimmicked groupthink.

Back to biochar: I think if farmers are willing to pay for it to use it as fertilizer for its own sake, go ahead. I'd strongly recommend against any sort of taxpayer funded subsidies or government push for biochar, particularly if the justification has anything to do with global warming, and especially if they use terminology such as "Save the Planet."

That would be so wrong across so many fronts...

If you really want to save our planet:

1. Go nuclear, solar, and wind, now. Pull the rug out from under any barriers and build, build, build. It'll probably help our economy, too.

2. Immediately eliminate all air, land, and sea pollution to the maximum extent possible.

3. Electric transportation to the maximum extent possible.

4. Algae oil for those vehicles (airplanes) which are a little disconnected from any grid.

5. Build high-e homes using techniquese which are actually cheaper than current low-e hoes.

6. Stop fish farming! It uses 300% more fish per pound of harvested fish than natural fishing.

7. Drastically reduce natural fishing - let the oceans recover! Plant food on land. Use it as food (not fuel).

Don't get me wrong - NONE of the above recommendations have anything to do with reducing anthropgenic CO2 emissions, as that won't save the planet.

The above recommendations are all about jumping off a very unsupportable energy infrastructure (fossil) which in a couple of decades will have crumbled to nothing, leaving those who haven't vacated it in a world of hurt. They're also about minimizing energy waste and minimizing pollution impact on our planet, which will allow the most drastically damaged area of our planet - our oceans - to slowly recover so they may regain their former ability to support life in abundance on our planet.

Hopefully, we're not too late.

Ronald Brak

2009-Jun-26, 08:27 AM

Mugaliens, do you doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas or that human activity has increased its level by about a third?

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 09:33 AM

The internal report the EPA top brass suppressed.

http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf

“The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature.”

Details of the suppression here:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d25-The-EPAs-internal-nightmare-over-global-warming-Part-1

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 09:41 AM

like it has been said, radiative heating is not the most prominent mechanism.
I missed that. What has been proposed as the most prominent mechanism for the transfer of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans? By who?

It has been shown that the Sun or the oscillations have not been causing the warming of the last century (Lean & Rind (2008) (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf), see especially figure 2).

They don't take account of accumulated heat in parts of the oceans not measured by sea surface temperatures.

Some papers for Ari to get his teeth into.

Chylek et.al 2007 Limits on climate sensitivity derived from recent satellite and surface observations. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S04, doi:10.1029/2007JD008740.

Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, 2009: Limits on CO2 climate forcing from recent temperature data of Earth. Energy & Environment, 20, 178-189

Spencer and Bracewell, 2008 Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration

Compo and Sardeshmukh, 2008: Oceanic influences on recent continental warming

hhEb09'1

2009-Jun-26, 12:09 PM

Mugaliens, do you doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas or that human activity has increased its level by about a third?I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

William

2009-Jun-26, 12:10 PM

This is one of the most egregious misinterpretations I've seen in a long time.

It's plain and simple lying about what another member is saying to make your point and it is not an acceptable discussion method. Do it again and you'll be suspended.

Henrik,
My point is that the planet has in the past abruptly cooled, which I have provided ample data to support. The specific reason why (the mechanisms) are not understand, however, there is concurrent with the abrupt cooling events cosmogenic isotope changes.

I provided observational data above to support the assertion (for example increased sea ice both poles) that some significant change (cooling) is underway.

Yes, I agree the trend in planetary temperature at this point shows modest cooling.

Is there any possibility the GWG supporters could be incorrect?

nauthiz

2009-Jun-26, 01:45 PM

But here's the key thing about that, as far as I'm concerned:

On one side, we have a whole herd people whose job is to study how the planet's climate works all having pooled their efforts to work out a scientific model that helps us better understand - in detail - what has happened in the past, and is now getting so good at making testable predictions that researchers are using computer simulations which implement the model to find and confirm new phenomena that occur in the real world. They are continuously testing the model, poking at all sorts of different spots to see what's weak and what breaks, and making improvements. They're surprisingly scrupulous about this, to the point that their most recent work on the state of the art is full to the brim of examples of stuff they'd like to work on some more, yes, but also to the point that they are able to come up with quantitative estimates of the amount of error that's introduced so we have an idea of just how well their work is doing.

On the other side, we have a committee of folks that has yet to produce anything like a theory. They are convinced that the mainstream theory is wrong, even though they seem to have a very shaky understanding of it - that bit being exacerbated by an inclination to consult blogs with a known history of questionable science rather than any of the more credible scientific resources that are out there. They seem to think that science consists of looking at graphs and doing eyeball extrapolations. They'll happily jump on examples of science so bad it clearly falls into the 'not even wrong' category without looking to see if the bandwagon has any wheels first, only to act as if that never happened as soon as someone points out that the author is a crank. Their method for criticizing the mainstream is to point out shortcomings of the mainstream theory - often ones that have already been resolved, or ones that everyone already knows about - and jump to the conclusion that this is damning evidence against the basic ideas of the theory without bothering to do any quantitative analysis to see what it really does to the error bars. The assumption seems to be that any little chip in the masonry will cause a building to collapse. If that is true, then it reflects a profound failure to understand how science really works.

In short, on one side we have what looks for all the world to me like science, and on the other side we have what looks for all the world to me like pseudoscience.

So that's what it boils down to for me. Come back with a genuine scientific challenge to the idea of anthropogenic climate change, and I'll be interested to see it. All this going nuts over graphs and weather reports doesn't impress me, and as far as I'm concerned continuing to post that stuff is whipping a dead horse. Same for posting blog posts in which someone sees a research article that details a mechanism we don't completely understand and decides that this is an earth-shattering development, even though a quick look at the IPCC report shows that it's old news.

Here's a start: If you want to show that the long-term trend for the planet is to stay about the same temperature or start cooling, you'd have to show that the planet is in thermal equilibrium, that it's emitting more energy than it absorbs, or that one of these two is about to happen very soon. I can think of a few ways to attack that. You can show that carbon dioxide does not absorb infrared radiation while letting shorter wavelengths past. You could show that all the spectrometers are wrong and greenhouse gas concentrations are not increasing rapidly as a result of human activity. You could show that photographers are wrong and the earth's albedo hasn't changed as a result of human activity. Or if none of those is fun, you could attack the first law of thermodynamics. Or you could propose a mechanism that will cause a major change to one of the abovementioned factors governing the system's overall thermal budget by reducing the atmosphere's CO2 concentrations by 25% overnight or something like that. There are probably some other options too.

That'd be a much better tack to take; a lot of the details that have been talked about in this thread are interesting and important, but at the end of the day I think they might be distracting details for a lot of folks. What the anthropogenic global warming idea really boils down to is this: Net energy flux.

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 01:56 PM

Nauthiz, good post as far as the substantive parts go, which is the last line:

"What the anthropogenic global warming idea really boils down to is this: Net energy flux."

I would add: of the various parts of the climate system.

So, since we are all agreed that ultimately, the energy into the system comes from the sun, (we'll disregard geothermal for now) let's take a closer look at how that solar energy is modulated, absorbed and re-emitted in the largest and most general terms to start with, to see how far we can get in agreement.

For starters, can we agree that the ocean has more than 1000 times the thermal capacity of the atmosphere, and stores energy over much longer timescales than the atmosphere?

lomiller1

2009-Jun-26, 02:04 PM

1979 - 2009 trends in degrees C per decade

GISS: 0.159
HADCRUT: 0.159
RSS: 0.157
UAH: 0.128

IOW the RSS satellite data agrees with two separate analysis of the surface station data, and the UAH data is the odd man out.

nauthiz

2009-Jun-26, 02:04 PM

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 02:12 PM

I like your idea of starting with the largest and most general terms, Stroller, but I don't think you started with the largest and most general terms. How about this question instead:

Is the earth (as a system) emitting more or less energy than it absorbs?

(Also - you really don't think the rest was substantive? So does that mean you don't think it matters whether opponents of anthropogenic climate change are scientifically literate or not? :eh: )

The same applies to the AGW hypothesis' proponents so how about we drop the snark and get on with the science?

So, do we have a good direct observational measure of whether the earth is emitting more or less energy than it absorbs? Not that I'm certain that would give us any real answers, because I read recently that we wouldn't necessarily see a change even if the earth (or at least the bits of it we have a handle on measuring) was warming or cooling.

And don't forget that while we look at the measure of how much the planet is emitting, we need to take into consideration we may not know everything about the ways in which the earth deals with the various types of energy it absorbs apart from TSI. The reason we need to do that is we don't currently have a satisfactory explanation for this:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
"Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.
Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena."

cope

2009-Jun-26, 04:37 PM

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
"Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.
Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena."

From a letter to Nature by Lori Fenton (Carl Sagan Center), Paul E. Geissler (NASA Ames Research Center) and Robert M. Haberle (USGS), original investigators of possible climate change on Mars:

"Our results suggest that documented albedo changes affect recent climate change and large-scale weather patterns on Mars, and thus albedo variations are a necessary component of future atmospheric and climate studies."

This is hardly the conclusion of the article for the Times written by reporter Jonathan Leake but while his article (and all sorts of conclusions based on his article) appear all over the internet, the original research was quite a bit harder to track down.

Interestingly enough, they have generated their own model for predicting climate change on the basis of albedo variations and it predicts the .65 degree increase.

Also, one cited bit of evidence of this warming is the apparent shrinking of the south polar ice cap on Mars. Given that the missing ice is frozen carbon dioxide, wouldn't it seem reasonable that this would increase the abundance of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere in a positive feedback process?

The letter to Nature (the full article is available for purchase) can be found here. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7136/abs/nature05718.html)

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 05:01 PM

Hi Cope, thanks for that. it does indeed raise lots of interesting questions, to which we don't currently have all the answers. Given that there is no detected life on Mars, maybe we can say a priori that any change in martian albedo has to be the result of a varying external input, and the sun is by far the biggest kid on the block.

What feedbacks may then increase the effect need to be measured. I don't know whether changes in co2 are monitored on Mars. Maybe someone else does.

Maha Vailo

2009-Jun-26, 06:06 PM

So, mugaliens, where do we suggest we get our protein and omega-3's from if we can't eat fish of any kind? And what about raising herbivorous fish (say, carp or tilapia) that could eat the residues from algae oil processing?

Also, what do you mean by "high-e" and "low-e" homes? What is to be done about the homes that have already been built?

- Maha Vailo

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-26, 07:03 PM

Just the other day I was thinking that as Stroller is clearly in the process of flooding this forum with all denialist standard "arguments", and with this argument list (http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php) in mind, I thought that what we haven't yet seen is the claims about different planets showing warming and therefore it can't be mankind's fault in Earth either. Sure enough, here we now have the "Mars is warming" (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm) claim parroted by Stroller. As you can see from the linked article, the argument has no base:

So the argument that Martian warming disproves anthropogenic global warming fails on two points - there is little empirical evidence that Mars is warming and Mars' climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo, not solar variations.

By the way, notice how the argument list has three planets claimed to show warming, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune, and the Mars article also mentioned Pluto as one place claimed to show warming, so that makes 4 planets out of 8 (Earth is excluded because we consider other planets than Earth) claimed to show warming. If 8 planets are considered, and they can only be either randomly warming or cooling, how many would be expected to show warming statistically, 4 perhaps (ignoring the exact no temperature differences option)? So, even ignoring the fact that denialists have based their argumentation to insufficient evidence, 4 planets warming wouldn't still make their case.

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 07:12 PM

"Mars is warming"[/url] claim parroted by Stroller. As you can see from the linked article, the argument has no base:

It's typical of a Martian climate change denialist like Ari to start quoting from blogs in support of his position.

Are you saying NASA isn't telling the truth?
Maybe you think they faked the moon landings as well.

See Ari, easy isn't it?

Now I know you are anxious to get away from it but:

Originally Posted by Ari Jokimaki View Post
"like it has been said, radiative heating is not the most prominent mechanism."

Stroller:
"I missed that. What has been proposed as the most prominent mechanism for the transfer of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans? By who?"

korjik

2009-Jun-26, 07:14 PM

Just the other day I was thinking that as Stroller is clearly in the process of flooding this forum with all denialist standard "arguments", and with this argument list (http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php) in mind, I thought that what we haven't yet seen is the claims about different planets showing warming and therefore it can't be mankind's fault in Earth either. Sure enough, here we now have the "Mars is warming" (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm) claim parroted by Stroller. As you can see from the linked article, the argument has no base:

By the way, notice how the argument list has three planets claimed to show warming, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune, and the Mars article also mentioned Pluto as one place claimed to show warming, so that makes 4 planets out of 8 (Earth is excluded because we consider other planets than Earth) claimed to show warming. If 8 planets are considered, and they can only be either randomly warming or cooling, how many would be expected to show warming statistically, 4 perhaps (ignoring the exact no temperature differences option)? So, even ignoring the fact that denialists have based their argumentation to insufficient evidence, 4 planets warming wouldn't still make their case.

Yup, dismissing someone as a 'denialist' is the way to win an arguement.

By the way, if you look at 8 planets in stable orbits over the period of several orbits, you should get zero showing much change. After 4.5x10^9 years, the planets should be in thermodynamic equilibrium with the Sun. So, if you see 4 warming, or even 4 warming and 4 cooling, something odd is going on.

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 07:44 PM

Thanks Korjik, good point. And especially true of a planet with a relatively short orbital period like Mars if the warming has been occurring over 30 years or so.

Gillianren

2009-Jun-26, 08:49 PM

Stroller, I suggest you should not accuse anyone else of not answering questions.

In fact, let's go back to one I think is awfully important. What would make you change your mind?

lomiller1

2009-Jun-26, 09:10 PM

The “other planets are warming too” but has been pretty soundly debunked (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/).

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 11:55 PM

Stroller, I suggest you should not accuse anyone else of not answering questions.

In fact, let's go back to one I think is awfully important. What would make you change your mind?

Fair's fair Gillian, I told you my qualifications and asked you yours long before your latest question.

Stroller

2009-Jun-26, 11:58 PM

The “other planets are warming too” but has been pretty soundly debunked (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/).

What is it with you planetary climate change denialists linking to blogs?

Do you think NASA lied too lomiller1? You and Ari are conspiracy theorists it seems.

Let's take a quick look then

"First off, I want to make a very big point here: the changes in the Earth due to global warming, while real, are somewhat subtle. Yet the Earth gets most of its heat from the Sun, so if the Sun were the cause, we’d expect the effects of warming to be much stronger on Earth than any outer planets. So any really strong signal of global warming on outer planets like Jupiter or especially Pluto, if real, are very unlikely to be due to the Sun."

Eh?

Where else does he think a "really strong signal of global warming on outer planets like Jupiter" could come from?

The Earth has nice strong negative feedbacks to deal with solar upticks, it has remained at a roughly even temperature for a couple of billion years while the sun has increased it's output by ~25%. Your blogger doesn't understand the first thing about planetary fluid dynamics.

Gillianren

2009-Jun-27, 02:03 AM

Fair's fair Gillian, I told you my qualifications and asked you yours long before your latest question.

My qualifications in evaluating scientific claims? Well, I was taught the scientific method in grade school, as I hope were you. I have taken college science classes and have continued with independent study since then. I consider myself better qualified to judge several scientific subject than I consider you to judge climatology, given some fundamental misunderstandings you've shown.

William

2009-Jun-27, 04:20 AM

There does seem to be unusual changes. Yes, too early to conclude based on these observations what will happen.

There have been some comments about a peculiar cooling in the Arctic. My link that noted it is expected that 90% of the migratory birds will not be able to nest, in high northern regions, as the snow has not melted, for example.

Compare past years (any of the last 50 years) to the current Arctic temperature. (Click on any of the past years.)

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2009.png

mugaliens

2009-Jun-27, 06:07 AM

Mugaliens, do you doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas or that human activity has increased its level by about a third?

Not in the least! Why do you ask?

So, mugaliens, where do we suggest we get our protein and omega-3's from if we can't eat fish of any kind?

Meats, eggs, nuts, grains, legumes, and dairy... At least those are the top 5 sources listed on Wikipedia.

By protein content (grams protein per 100 g food), it's egg white, bearded seal, soy protein, moose, whey, steelhead trout, narwhal, spriulina alga, beluga, arctic char... Certainly fish are among the list. But just as certainly, other items are on the list which can provide 100% of our protein requirements.

For example, flax is six times richer than most fish oils in n-3 (Omega-3). Other sources include butternuts, walnuts, pecans, and hazel nuts. Grass-fed beef is also high in n-3, as is lamb, and even microalgae (Crypthecodinium cohnii and Schizochytrium ) which can be produced in bioreactors.

In short, Maha - LOTS of sources!!!

And what about raising herbivorous fish (say, carp or tilapia) that could eat the residues from algae oil processing?

Go for it!

Also, what do you mean by "high-e" and "low-e" homes? What is to be done about the homes that have already been built?

"e" refers to overall energy efficiency. My uncle has a high-e home. My parents do not. They both have the same square footage and similar floorplans, but my uncle pays less than a third of my parent's total energy bill.

There are many inexpensive things which can be done to existing homes to make them far more energy efficient.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-27, 06:50 AM

It's typical of a Martian climate change denialist like Ari to start quoting from blogs in support of his position.
You can try to handwave the evidence off like this (talk about trying to avoid specifics of the matter...), but I can also refer you directly to the paper (the blog I quoted is based on actual research papers) they referred to: Szwast et al. (2006) (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/uploads/File/People/mir/Szwast_JGR2005JE002485.pdf) show that Mars albedo changes strongly due to dust conditions, so comparing two snapshots like Fenton et al. (2007) (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7136/abs/nature05718.html) did, doesn't provide proof of global warming in Mars.

If you look at my post again, you will also notice that I never denied the possibility of Mars warming, I only highlighted the lack of evidence for it, meaning that making a conclusion that Mars is warming based on the available evidence is premature.

Are you saying NASA isn't telling the truth?
I don't know, what did NASA say on this matter? However, I am saying that evidence from Fenton et al. doesn't justify the conclusion that Mars is warming. More data is needed.

Now I know you are anxious to get away from it but:

Originally Posted by Ari Jokimaki View Post
"like it has been said, radiative heating is not the most prominent mechanism."

Stroller:
"I missed that. What has been proposed as the most prominent mechanism for the transfer of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans? By who?"
From my latest posts:
#1454 (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-49.html#post1514954): 4 questions - you answered 1
#1515 (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-51.html#post1516982): 5 questions - you answered 0
This has been a common trend here ever since I started participating discussions about climate. You don't answer questions, but then try to blame others not answering them (sometimes even when questions have clearly been answered already).

As it happens, I was going to answer your questions today anyway, I just made a quick response to the Mars thing yesterday, but I wanted to see which revision stays of the post containing the questions. You seem to have a tendency to change the contents of your posts even hours after the initial post. (Reminds me of time some months ago when you had a habbit of making insulting comments about me, letting them stay a while, and then editing them out.)

Answer to your questions is found from the papers I linked to:

From the perspective of large - scaIe ocean atmosphere interactions, it is argued that a warm and moist midlatitude jet and the dynamical oceanic response to the associated surface windstress (inducing upwelling of cold water on the poleward flank of the ACC and its subsequent equatorward advection) are the two key ingredients required to explained net ocean heat gain over the ACC.
However, the papers I provided are just some examples here and there, and not necessarily most representative of the body of research on the subject. Their purpose was to give you a handle to study the issue further by yourself (by following the citations to given papers for example). Answer to "by who?" is scientific community of course.

You claim that you know that I'm anxious to get away from it, what is you proof for this claim?

Yup, dismissing someone as a 'denialist' is the way to win an arguement.
"Denialist" is a commonly used term in this context (Stroller likes to use the term "alarmist" of climate scientists). I also didn't use the term in order to win any arguments. I did adress the specifics of the subject.

By the way, if you look at 8 planets in stable orbits over the period of several orbits, you should get zero showing much change. After 4.5x10^9 years, the planets should be in thermodynamic equilibrium with the Sun. So, if you see 4 warming, or even 4 warming and 4 cooling, something odd is going on.
I was presenting my argument in the light of current body of evidence presented from Mars. Take two measurements in different times, and determine the direction of temperature evolution based on that. Do you think that in such conditions you could ever get exactly zero temperature evolution? It doesn't matter if it's very small amount of warming because this crowd will use anything. If from your two measurements you derive a "warming" of 0.00001 K +/- 5 K, some of them will still claim that the place is experiencing warming.

mugaliens

2009-Jun-27, 06:56 AM

1983 had a similar below-average start around the 130-155 day point...

Torsten

2009-Jun-27, 07:46 AM

Maha Vailo

2009-Jun-27, 08:22 AM

Meats, eggs, nuts, grains, legumes, and dairy... At least those are the top 5 sources listed on Wikipedia.

By protein content (grams protein per 100 g food), it's egg white, bearded seal, soy protein, moose, whey, steelhead trout, narwhal, spriulina alga, beluga, arctic char... Certainly fish are among the list. But just as certainly, other items are on the list which can provide 100% of our protein requirements.

I think I may have asked a silly question there, but I was wondering about what your favorite sources of protein were.

For example, flax is six times richer than most fish oils in n-3 (Omega-3). Other sources include butternuts, walnuts, pecans, and hazel nuts. Grass-fed beef is also high in n-3, as is lamb, and even microalgae (Crypthecodinium cohnii and Schizochytrium ) which can be produced in bioreactors.

In short, Maha - LOTS of sources!!!

That may be true, but I think those are the wrong kinds of omega-3's. Also, aren't those sources more expensive, pound for pound than fish? On an additional note, I doubt there's enough pasture land and grove land to grow all the grass-fed red meat and nuts to satisfy the world's omega-3 needs in a sustainable manner. And who would relish the thought of eating microalgae, anyway?

There is, however, enough room in the ocean for aquaculture.

I have also heard that flaxseed oil increases the risk of prostate cancer. Can't dig out the source right now, but it's another reason to find sustainable means of aquaculture ASAP.

"e" refers to overall energy efficiency. My uncle has a high-e home. My parents do not. They both have the same square footage and similar floorplans, but my uncle pays less than a third of my parent's total energy bill.

There are many inexpensive things which can be done to existing homes to make them far more energy efficient.

Like what? Can any of these be done for, say, under $25? My parents are on an extreme budget.

- Maha Vailo

Stroller

2009-Jun-27, 09:31 AM

If you look at my post again... More data is needed.

Just like it is here on earth. We still don't know enough about inter decadal changes in cloud covering the parts of the climate system particularly sensitive to insolation.

Answer to your questions is found from the papers I linked to:
Answer to "by who?" is scientific community of course.

The papers you link don't say the mechanism they describe is the major mechanism for the transfer of heat from the atmosphere to the ocean as you stated. Your concentration on specific studies seems to be preventing you from seeing the bigger picture, which is that because the oceans have more than a thousand times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, and retain and release heat on much longer timescales than the atmosphere does, it is the oceans which drive longer term changes in atmospheric temperature in general, not the other way round.

The vastly powerful role water vapour plays in atmosphere-ocean interactional dynamics means that small changes in the feedbacks produced by water completely overwhelm any influence co2 might have. Gavin admits as much in his article on realclimate.

"Denialist" is a commonly used term in this context (Stroller likes to use the term "alarmist" of climate scientists).

Since Swifts admonition to us a while ago I have been trying to stick to the phrase 'AGW hypothesis proponents'. You however have been as insulting and derogatory as ever (and getting away with it), and occasionally I respond in kind.

I was presenting my argument in the light of current body of evidence presented from Mars. Take two measurements in different times, and determine the direction of temperature evolution based on that. Do you think that in such conditions you could ever get exactly zero temperature evolution? It doesn't matter if it's very small amount of warming because this crowd will use anything. If from your two measurements you derive a "warming" of 0.00001 K +/- 5 K, some of them will still claim that the place is experiencing warming.

Well I was going on the article quoting 'NASA scientists' who had discovered a 0.5C warming since the '70's. A quantity similar to the amount of warming on earth. So this 0.00001 K is just a dismissive rhetorical device as far as I can see.

Stroller

2009-Jun-27, 10:19 AM

My qualifications in evaluating scientific claims? Well, I was taught the scientific method in grade school, as I hope were you. I have taken college science classes and have continued with independent study since then. I consider myself better qualified to judge several scientific subject than I consider you to judge climatology, given some fundamental misunderstandings you've shown.

Hi Gillian. Thank you.
As I told you before, I have a joint honours degree in The History and Philosophy of Science and Computer Science. I am also a fully qualified Mechanical Engineer.

Whilst I admire your commitment to continued independent study, I note that you already said on this thread that you know squat about climatology. I wonder therefore how you are able to assess 'fundamental misunderstandings' regarding it.

I also don't know which are the 'several scientific subject' that you consider yourself 'better qualified to judge', and given you don't know which scientific subjects I studied during my degree or that I have taken a continued interest in during the years following my post graduate work, I wonder how you have reached your conclusion.

To be honest, I find your attempts to smear my knowledge and reasoning abilities amusing if a little gauche.

Anyway, since you gave me an answer, I'll partially answer your most recent question; "What would it take to change your mind" (about anthropogenic global warming.

Well, if the earth had been getting warmer rather than cooler for the last decade, that would be a start.

If the IPCC projections weren't based on the 30 year positive phase of a sixty year oceanic cycle overlaid on a warming trend which has been in place since the nadir of the little ice age before man made co2 emissions got going to any great extent that would help.
http://1.2.3.12/bmi/wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg

If the models properly accounted for convective processes inside local weather systems which lift vast amounts of heat straight up past most of the co2 blanket and radiate it to space that would be a good thing too.
Clouds might then be understood as the powerful heat engines they are, rather than fluffy things which trap heat in at night (except the skies clear in the nightime tropics where the big heat action is happening). They are far more powerful negative feedback in the climate system than modelers seem to realise.

When the AGW hypothesis proponents stop wittering about a paltry co2 greenhouse effect and spend an amount of time studying the tropical steamy sauna effect commensurate with the proportion of heat energy transported by it, I'll start to take them a bit more seriously and accord them a bit more respect. While they follow the money and the agenda driven science it buys, and disregard far more powerful climate processes, I won't.

mugaliens

2009-Jun-27, 11:13 AM

That may be true, but I think those are the wrong kinds of omega-3's.

:confused:

Also, aren't those sources more expensive, pound for pound than fish?

You seen the price of some of the fish in the supermarket these days?

On an additional note, I doubt there's enough pasture land and grove land to grow all the grass-fed red meat and nuts to satisfy the world's omega-3 needs in a sustainable manner.

You doubt? Or do you know? If you don't know, please either crank the calcs and let us know or more on!

And who would relish the thought of eating microalgae, anyway?

Uh... Fish... Plants (fertilizer)...

There is, however, enough room in the ocean for aquaculture.

Not really (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing)...

I have also heard that flaxseed oil increases the risk of prostate cancer. Can't dig out the source right now, but it's another reason to find sustainable means of aquaculture ASAP.

And what of the other 7 alternatives? Do they all increse the risk of prostate cancer?

PraedSt

2009-Jun-27, 12:15 PM

Climate Bill (Cap-n-Trade) passed in House (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJmY6ybgeKpU). Senate next.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act calls for the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. It would establish a limited number of pollution permits, more than 70 percent of which would initially be given away free to utilities, manufacturers, state governments and others, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The permits could then be traded or sold.

The bill’s chief sponsors -- House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat -- agreed to reduce the plan’s environmental mandates and increase aid to polluters, including coal-fired power plants, to help companies meet the measure’s clean-air regulations. The strategy was necessary to amass the votes needed to pass the bill.

“The Senate is now going to see it’s possible to do this legislation” by balancing competing interests and building “coalitions of environmentalists and industry to support it,” Waxman said in an interview. More there.

Ronald Brak

2009-Jun-27, 01:58 PM

Well, if the earth had been getting warmer rather than cooler for the last decade, that would be a start.

The hottest year on record was 2005 followed by 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-conten.../hansen-t2.jpg

Maha Vailo

2009-Jun-27, 02:28 PM

:confused:

I don't understand what you're confused about. There are several kinds of omega-3's and not all of them are as beneficial as the stuff in fish.

You seen the price of some of the fish in the supermarket these days?

If you get the stuff in a can, you can cut your prices. Have you seen the price of flaxseed oil recently?

You doubt? Or do you know? If you don't know, please either crank the calcs and let us know or more on!

I'm not the mathematical type, but I do know that you can't get as much meat off a pasture than you can off a feedlot. The difference I will leave to those better-versed in animal agriculture than me. (I'm in the plant field myself.)

Uh... Fish... Plants (fertilizer)...

Yeah, but not humans.

Not really (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing)...

Apples and oranges. I already mentioned herbivorous fish. And if we can find a means of feeding fish that didn't require other fish (I have read about genetically engineering soybeans to provide food for fish), we can raise other species as well.

And what of the other 7 alternatives? Do they all increse the risk of prostate cancer?

No, but are nuts and algae as rich as source of the kinds of omega-3's found in fish? I doubt it.

- Maha Vailo

Stroller

2009-Jun-27, 04:04 PM

The hottest year on record was 2005 followed by 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-conten.../hansen-t2.jpg

True, and doesn't conflict with my statement that the earth has been cooling for the last decade.

It's a pity 'the record' you refer to is inaccurate and short, but there you go.

Before Jim Hansen and the NOAA started 'adjusting' the data, the Gistemp record had the 1998 peak hotter than the 2005 peak, as it still is on the other three global temp series, and it wasn't much above the 1930-1940 period either.

The reality dodgers have been busy, although it would seem that the usual downturn in global temperature during the negative phase of the oceanic cycles postwar was mitigated by the busiest solar cycle on record (400 years of data) and a succession of high, short and vigorous cycles thereafter until the current deep minimum.

Stroller

2009-Jun-27, 04:38 PM

EPA report suppressed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5117890.shtml

"Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty “decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”"

cope

2009-Jun-27, 05:42 PM

EPA report suppressed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5117890.shtml

Yes, I read about this yesterday at RealClimate, link here. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/#more-691)

To mine a few comments from RealClimate:

"Their main points are nicely summarised thus: a) the science is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009) reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c) the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing mass, no sirree…, e) the recession will save us!, f) water vapour feedback is negative!, and g) Scafetta and West's statistical fit of temperature to an obsolete solar forcing curve means that all other detection and attribution work is wrong. From this 'evidence', they then claim that all variations in climate are internal variability, except for the warming trend which is caused by the sun, oh and by the way the globe is cooling."

and

"...what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hilter and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we've discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc."

The RealClimate post goes on to address particular issues of the "suppressed" report.

The CBS report you linked to is worth reading all the way to the end as it puts the origin and rejection of the report and the key players in context.

Stroller

2009-Jun-27, 06:10 PM

I know, there's a comment of mine on that realclimate thread too, and a few which didn't make it through the censorship process.

Gillianren

2009-Jun-27, 06:17 PM

As I told you before, I have a joint honours degree in The History and Philosophy of Science and Computer Science. I am also a fully qualified Mechanical Engineer.

So you've said.

Whilst I admire your commitment to continued independent study, I note that you already said on this thread that you know squat about climatology. I wonder therefore how you are able to assess 'fundamental misunderstandings' regarding it.

Well, you see, I ask questions and listen to the answers. I also understand the difference between climate and weather and when to trust scientists, especially when it's pretty much all of them, over politically-oriented blogs. I know that "such-and-such is not necessarily caused by global warming" is not actually the same as "there's no such thing as global warming."

I also don't know which are the 'several scientific subject' that you consider yourself 'better qualified to judge', and given you don't know which scientific subjects I studied during my degree or that I have taken a continued interest in during the years following my post graduate work, I wonder how you have reached your conclusion.

I read what you write.

The hottest year on record was 2005 followed by 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-conten.../hansen-t2.jpg

True, and doesn't conflict with my statement that the earth has been cooling for the last decade.

You see, you're going to have to explain that. Because it looks an awful lot like it does, unless you can show evidence that the years from the last decade that haven't been listed were awfully cold. A bald statement like that shows that you don't understand the first thing, no matter what qualifications you claim, about presenting evidence. "I don't trust this evidence for X reason" is not the same as "this evidence is incorrect because it fails to take into account Y data."

Also, the fact that you don't seem to understand the difference between the peer reviewed papers on the subject and the unpublished claims of those who don't produce them is frankly worrying. And if you don't trust the peer review process, well, that's even more worrying. Not that I claim it's perfect. Just really important as far as it does work.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-27, 07:00 PM

What is it with you planetary climate change denialists linking to blogs?

you may want to look at this particular blog entry a little more closely ;)

William

2009-Jun-27, 11:20 PM

For context, the graph William posted is for the area north of the 80th parallel. I've marked it in red on this copy of today's arctic sea ice extent map:
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/th_80th_parallel.jpg (http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/80th_parallel.jpg)

Back on page 7 of this thread, in January, William was reporting how cold it was in the Great Lakes region, and how canals in Holland were freezing, and I pointed out how it was above average temperature in the high arctic, at Alert, Cambridge Bay and Resolute. The point was not to argue that it is getting warmer, but to get him thinking about the regional extent of cold air masses that bring extreme temperatures. But it's interesting, on William's chart the area between this year's daily line and the average appears to be much more in the positive than in the negative.

Compare the following two maps. Again, I've added the 80th parallel in red.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/th_April_1-15_2009_air_temp_composite_.jpg (http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/April_1-15_2009_air_temp_composite_.jpg)

The weather stories William recently posted were about Churchill and the Hudson Bay area, as I recall. That would be on the right side of this map for May:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/th_May2009_air_temp_composite_anomaly.jpg (http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/May2009_air_temp_composite_anomaly.jpg)

Unfortunately the scale of the two maps varies, and I don't know why they differ. It would be nice if the second one showed all of Hudson Bay.

Torsten,
The open ocean would moderate a cooling affect. A warming or cooling climate change would appear as a see-saw change in weather due to the thermal lag of the oceans and internal mechanisms such as changes in the jet stream and so forth.

This seems to be a global rather than a local phenomenon. (i.e. My comment concerning record cold temperatures in the Hudson Bay region and the high arctic is not the only regions that have experienced cold temperatures.)

In both hemispheres there have been reports of record cold temperatures at night. I see in the US farmers in corn growing areas have been discussing the issue. (Warm nights are required for fast growing corn. Farmers in the Canadian prairie regions have also noted poor hay growing. I see reports of record cold temperatures in the US, Australia, New Zealand. In Calgary, Alberta in June we had to turn the heat on in our house three times and do not open the windows at night. Double pane windows.) The phenomenon is the day time temperature is average to below average and the night temperature is record cold.

Climate change can be cooling or warming.

The atmosphere’s radiation properties, also depends on chemical and ionic reactions. CO2 variation is not the only change that is taking place.

Comment:
The earth’s ionosphere has shrunk by 35% in the night time and 16% in the day time. I am not sure whether the change in the earth’s ionosphere is in response to the cold night time temperatures and cooler daytime temperatures or the change in the earth’s ionosphere is due the recent solar changes. Changes in the earth’s ionosphere seem to indicate that something is changing.

http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/68781-solar-cycle-24-a-6.html#post1407771

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 03:20 AM

you may want to look at this particular blog entry a little more closely ;)
I'll do that if you'll look at this one closely.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/new-paper-global-dimming-and-brightening-a-review/
Then we'll compare notes.

You'll be pleased to know it is a peer reviewed paper which is under discussion.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-28, 05:23 AM

Just like it is here on earth. We still don't know enough about inter decadal changes in cloud covering the parts of the climate system particularly sensitive to insolation.
Ahh, yet one more thing we supposedly "don't know enough about". Did you determine this also by doing a "paper search" in denialist blogs? Nice work on the selective quoting and changing the subject by the way.

We do have very good observational body of evidence showing that greenhouse gases cause warming, an issue you have been very quiet about.

The papers you link don't say the mechanism they describe is the major mechanism for the transfer of heat from the atmosphere to the ocean as you stated. Your concentration on specific studies seems to be preventing you from seeing the bigger picture, which is that because the oceans have more than a thousand times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, and retain and release heat on much longer timescales than the atmosphere does, it is the oceans which drive longer term changes in atmospheric temperature in general, not the other way round.
So, where do you think the ocean gets the heat that it uses to drive the longer term changes?

It's very simple principle; assume an example situation where there is an equilibrium around 10 degrees C. During the day the temperature of the atmosphere rises due to solar heating and heat starts to transfer from atmosphere to the ocean. Let us assume for simplicity that each day the solar heating would be the same. During the night the temperature of the atmosphere drops and the heat starts to transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. Let us also assume that nighttime conditions would be the same each night. Now, if the atmosphere would experience a warming from increased greenhouse gas concentration that would change its equilibrium temperature to 11 degrees instead of 10 where the ocean still is, then during the day the heat transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean would be little bit stronger than before simply because there would be more temperature difference between the ocean and the atmosphere, atmosphere would have the same solar heating as before but it would have the additional one degree heating there as well. During the night the atmosphere would also be one degree warmer than before, so the heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere would be weaker than before, meaning that the ocean wouldn't cool so much during the night anymore and would therefore maintain more heat content.

So, the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases to the ocean is to enhance the heat transfer that goes from the atmosphere to the ocean and to weaken the heat transfer that goes from the ocean to the atmosphere. Both effects are working towards a warmer global ocean.

Well I was going on the article quoting 'NASA scientists' who had discovered a 0.5C warming since the '70's. A quantity similar to the amount of warming on earth. So this 0.00001 K is just a dismissive rhetorical device as far as I can see.
No, you're not seeing the point, you would need to look further. The number I gave was an extreme example to highlight that it is very improbable to find exactly zero difference when you only have two data points. It had nothing to do with the numerical value of that study.

Once again you ignored the questions presented to you:
"I don't know, what did NASA say on this matter?"
"You claim that you know that I'm anxious to get away from it, what is you proof for this claim?"

Ronald Brak

2009-Jun-28, 05:28 AM

Not in the least! Why do you ask?

I'm trying to understand what you think about global warming.

As you accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that humans have increased its level by about a third, then do you think this accounts for some or all of the global warming that has occured over the past 100 years?

Ronald Brak

2009-Jun-28, 05:47 AM

True, and doesn't conflict with my statement that the earth has been cooling for the last decade.

It does. You might want to check the temperature record again:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 06:28 AM

It does. You might want to check the temperature record again:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg

You see, you're going to have to explain that. Because it looks an awful lot like it does, unless you can show evidence that the years from the last decade that haven't been listed were awfully cold. A bald statement like that shows that you don't understand the first thing, no matter what qualifications you claim, about presenting evidence. "I don't trust this evidence for X reason" is not the same as "this evidence is incorrect because it fails to take into account Y data."

Thanks for the advice Gillian, here's the data. I'm not trying to contradict Ronalds list of warm years, I'm just showing that warm years do not logically preclude a cooling decade, since you and he thought they did.

It's a bit difficult to see the last decade on Ronald's graph, so let's take a closer look and include all four main global temperature series for completeness.

Here's the last 8 years:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/glotempmay092.gif

Here's the last 12 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.5/plot/uah/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trend

NASA's Jim Hansen and his GIStemp product seems to be the outlier on that one, as the linear trend is of opposite sign to the other three series. This is an indication that all those 'adjustments' are affecting GIStemp in undesirable ways IMO.

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 07:14 AM

Ahh, yet one more thing we supposedly "don't know enough about". Did you determine this also by doing a "paper search" in denialist blogs? Nice work on the selective quoting and changing the subject by the way.

You told me ISSCP cloud data wasn't conclusive about 20 pages ago. I'm just going on what you said Ari. Maybe I shouldn't though, since you constantly flip flop like this.

We do have very good observational body of evidence showing that greenhouse gases cause warming, an issue you have been very quiet about.

Still waiting for your evidence. Co2 on it's own can't do much, and the supposed water vapor feedback posited by the models is contradicted by observation. Where's the beef?

So, where do you think the ocean gets the heat that it uses to drive the longer term changes?
The sunlight which penetrates 70 metres or so into the upper ocean and directly heats the water.

It's very simple principle; assume an example situation where there is an equilibrium around 10 degrees C. During the day the temperature of the atmosphere rises due to solar heating and heat starts to transfer from atmosphere to the ocean.
Bzzzt. Sorry for the interruption Ari, but you still haven't explained how downwelling long wave IR from the atmosphere or conduction heats the ocean to any significant degree compared to direct solar absorption.

Right, as you were:

Let us assume for simplicity that each day the solar heating would be the same. During the night the temperature of the atmosphere drops and the heat starts to transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. Let us also assume that nighttime conditions would be the same each night. Now, if the atmosphere would experience a warming from increased greenhouse gas concentration

Bzzzzt. Sorry to interrupt again Ari, but you still haven't presented any evidence that any significant increase in global air temperature is due to increased levels of co2 or the much stronger greenhouse gas, water vapor.

Right, carry on.

that would change its equilibrium temperature to 11 degrees instead of 10 where the ocean still is, then during the day the heat transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean would be little bit stronger than before simply because there would be more temperature difference between the ocean and the atmosphere, atmosphere would have the same solar heating as before but it would have the additional one degree heating there as well. During the night the atmosphere would also be one degree warmer than before, so the heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere would be weaker than before, meaning that the ocean wouldn't cool so much during the night anymore and would therefore maintain more heat content.

But ocean heat content has been flat and then falling slightly since 2003 according to Josh Willis' adjusted argo data, while atmospheric co2 has increased Ari. This is clearly something different to biennial oscillation, so how does that fit into the AGW hypothesis? If you are going to say that other natural variability can overcome the greenhouse effect for years on end, you need to say what these other natural factors are, and how they influence climate. Otherwise it looks a lot like handwaving.

So, the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases to the ocean is to enhance the heat transfer that goes from the atmosphere to the ocean and to weaken the heat transfer that goes from the ocean to the atmosphere. Both effects are working towards a warmer global ocean.

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago, and add that since a lot of the oceans radiated heat gets convected up through cloud systems to altitudes where the molecules of co2 and water vapour are relatively rare, most of the alleged greenhouse effect is simply bypassed by the departing heat on it's way to space. I'm not saying there is zero effect due to increased co2, I don't know for sure, but I am saying the effect is considerably less than that claimed by AGW hypothesis proponents, and may well be so small as to be negligible.

"I don't know, what did NASA say on this matter?"
"You claim that you know that I'm anxious to get away from it, what is you proof for this claim?"

All I know is that 'NASA scientists' say Mars has warmed 0.5C since the '70's according to the article I linked. And I said at that time that there was clearly a lot we don't know. I suggest you contact the NASA scientists concerned for a definitive answer. I suspect they are not so stupid that they didn't account for the known annual cycles mentioned in the paper you linked but we'll see.

I think you were reluctant to get into heat transfer from atmosphere to ocean because you know it's dodgy ground for the AGW hypothesis. But I could be wrong. I'll see how honestly and completely you answer my points above and particularly the question of how much heat is transferred from atmosphere to ocean via it's 'skin' compared to direct solar insolation into the upper 70 metres before I form a firmer judgement on that.

Ronald Brak

2009-Jun-28, 07:42 AM

Thanks for the advice Gillian, here's the data. I'm not trying to contradict Ronalds list of warm years, I'm just showing that warm years do not logically preclude a cooling decade, since you and he thought they did.

They do.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...emp_change.jpg

If you draw a line through the last ten years it slopes upwards. The five year mean slopes upwards. It is incorrect to say that it does not conflict with your statement that the earth has been cooling for the last decade.

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 08:09 AM

They do.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...emp_change.jpg

If you draw a line through the last ten years it slopes upwards. The five year mean slopes upwards. It is incorrect to say that it does not conflict with your statement that the earth has been cooling for the last decade.

So you prefer putting a ruler against around 20 pixels on your screen on a tiny graph which covers 130 years to paying attention to nice big graphs which show all the monthly data as well as the declining linear trends for the period in question?

I seem to remember the last time you told us how you'd put your ruler up against your monitor and used the result I had to explain how you'd made a basic mathematical error in your calculation.

If you are going to ignore properly presented data, I'm afraid I can't help you any further.

Once again:
Here's the last 8 years:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedha...tempmay092.gif

Here's the last 12 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah...m:1997.5/trend

NASA's Jim Hansen and his GIStemp product seems to be the outlier on that one, as the linear trend is of opposite sign to the other three series. This is an indication that all those 'adjustments' are affecting GIStemp in undesirable ways IMO.

Ronald Brak

2009-Jun-28, 09:02 AM

So you prefer putting a ruler against around 20 pixels on your screen on a tiny graph which covers 130 years to paying attention to nice big graphs which show all the monthly data as well as the declining linear trends for the period in question?

I seem to remember the last time you told us how you'd put your ruler up against your monitor and used the result I had to explain how you'd made a basic mathematical error in your calculation.

If you are going to ignore properly presented data, I'm afraid I can't help you any further.

For the past decade the GISS, RSS, HADCRUT and UAH data have all trended upwards, indicating that the earth has warmed over the past 10 years. Check the data and you will see that I am correct. They all contradict your statement that the world has been cooling for a decade.

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 10:06 AM

Depending on the start point you choose, it's possible to use the data to show a slight warming or slight cooling for the last decade or so. The point is, global temperature has been pretty much flat while human emitted co2 has risen some 15% and atmospheric co2 has risen around 8%.

cope

2009-Jun-28, 01:45 PM

Depending on the start point you choose, it's possible to use the data to show a slight warming or slight cooling for the last decade or so.

Excellent point that is nicely illustrated in this YouTube video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y15UGhhRd6M)

Joe Durnavich

2009-Jun-28, 02:01 PM

It does. You might want to check the temperature record again:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg

(1) I know the explantion for the warming from 1971 to 2009 is the increase in CO2. Does the same explain the seemingly identical temperature rise shown in the graph from 1907 to 1945?

(2) I notice the graph starts near the exit of the Little Ice Age and shows how temperatures have increased since then. Are those LIA temperatures the temperatures we want to go back to? Was that the glory time for humanity climatewise?

cope

2009-Jun-28, 02:22 PM

(1) I know the explantion for the warming from 1971 to 2009 is the increase in CO2. Does the same explain the seemingly identical temperature rise shown in the graph from 1907 to 1945?

This graph (http://aim.hamptonu.edu/library/p7hg_img_2/fullsize/co2graph_fs.jpg) from NASA would seem to answer in the affirmative.

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 03:42 PM

This graph (http://aim.hamptonu.edu/library/p7hg_img_2/fullsize/co2graph_fs.jpg) from NASA would seem to answer in the affirmative.

And this graph (http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view&current=sst-nino-ssa.jpg) produced by yours truly indicates there might also be another explanation.

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 03:58 PM

Excellent point that is nicely illustrated in this YouTube video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y15UGhhRd6M)
Very well put together propaganda movie. I watched it with the sound off, so I could view the data presented without having Sinclairs POV rammed down my throat. I covered some of the points about 8 year trends and the selectivity, bias, and unreliability of the main dataset used a few days ago, but I don't blame you for not wading through this thread to keep up, there is a lot of verbiage to get through.

I think the key point worth considering, is that the two previous occasions in the series when the global average temperature dropped over an 8 year timespan was when there were big volcano events in climate sensitive areas; El Chichon and Pinatubo. The current 8 year drop in temperature doesn't have any big volcanos associated with it, so something else is going on.

I'll find the time to watch the movie again with the sound on, to see whether Sinclair is honest enough to alert the viewer to that fact.

captain swoop

2009-Jun-28, 07:55 PM

This last page of posrs is exactly why these threads should be sunbject to stricter rules as in ATM

cope

2009-Jun-28, 09:36 PM

Very well put together propaganda movie. I watched it with the sound off, so I could view the data presented without having Sinclairs POV rammed down my throat.

Well, your response is unfortunate on a couple of fronts. For one, you missed Sinclair agreeing with your point that the heat capacity of the ocean is 1,000 times that of the atmosphere and that the story of global warming is really the story of ocean warming. Though he doesn't mention the El Chichon and Pinatubo eruptions specifically (one can, however, extract the data from the graphs Sinclair provides) he does relate warming and cooling to El Nino and La Nina events to explain the recent cooling trend.

Additionally, I don't recall you ever linking to a narrated video, but I can't imagine that if you did, I wouldn't watch AND listen to it. Pity you don't afford me the same respect.

Stroller

2009-Jun-28, 10:13 PM

I don't recall you ever linking to a narrated video, but I can't imagine that if you did, I wouldn't watch AND listen to it. Pity you don't afford me the same respect.
Cope, no disrespect intended and I will listen to it. I have to say I was put off by the title and that's why I left the sound off. I did pay attention as I watched it from start to finish though.

cope

2009-Jun-28, 10:39 PM

Cope, no disrespect intended and I will listen to it.

Thank you for that. If nothing else, listening to the audio the first time would relieve you (me) of having to watch it more than once.

Also, thank you because your posts will make me much more attentive to issues regarding ocean heat. I make a big deal of teaching my high school students that the Earth heats the atmosphere and from now on, comparing and contrasting how the solid land masses and the oceans absorb, radiate and heat the atmosphere differently will be a new topic of study for me.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 06:56 AM

Thank you for that. If nothing else, listening to the audio the first time would relieve you (me) of having to watch it more than once.

Also, thank you because your posts will make me much more attentive to issues regarding ocean heat. I make a big deal of teaching my high school students that the Earth heats the atmosphere and from now on, comparing and contrasting how the solid land masses and the oceans absorb, radiate and heat the atmosphere differently will be a new topic of study for me.

Hi Cope, OK, I listened. As I pointed out a few days ago, the choice of dataset (GIStemp) is unfortunate. Up until a few years ago, GIStemp had a year around 1940 as warmer than 1998 in the U.S. but this has been 'adjusted'.
Here is the data as archived a few years ago compared to how it is now.
http://i44.tinypic.com/295sp37.gif
GIStemp also has an unrealistic warming trend for Africa twice that of the UAH satellite record built into it's global series, when it's coverage of Africa in terms of station locations and reports is patchy to say the least.
Likewise, australasia has suffered a lot of 'adjustment' by USHCN, the suppliers of NASA GIStemp data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/an-australian-look-at-ushcn-20th-century-trend-is-largely-if-not-entirely-an-artefact-arising-from-the-%E2%80%9Ccorrections%E2%80%9D/

Lomiller1 and Ari will tell you there are sound reasons for these adjustments, but I ask you to consider why it is that older temperature have largely been adjusted downwards while modern ones have been adjusted upwards, when the fact of the effect of urban heat islands on the surface temperature record is pretty much undeniable. Jim Hansen has done some clever footwork in his definitions of 'rural' and urban stations, but when you factor in the effect of (for example) modern irrigation methods lifting night time temperatures around many 'rural' stations, the waters are murkier than would first appear.

I hope you will notice that my choice of timeframe in this plot is not a "cherry pick" from the top of the '98 el nino,and illustrates how far NASA GIStemp has strayed from agreement with the other three measures, including, "the highly respected British MET office" HADcru record.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.5/plot/uah/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trend

Also, the choice of data frame from the late 70's shown in most of the presentation neatly avoids the cooling period from the end of WWII to the mid seventies which the AGW hypothesis has a problem explaining without admitting the degree of oceanic influence on the surface air temperature.

I note the scary sequence of the arctic shrinking is a set of images showing perfectly normal winter to summer variation, and is glossed over without comment. Arctic ice area has been close to the 30 year average most of this year.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png

I'm really pleased to hear there are teachers out there still capable of independent thought.

If you find out where I can apply for my oil industry funding, please let me know. :)

As a final note, this from Bill Illis, with his full permission to reproduce:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/online-global-warming-study-censored-by-epa/
Bill Illis (06:54:10) :

Earlier in this thread, I noted that GISS has not had a very good record of accurate forecasting temperatures with its climate models. I’ve charted up all the different forecasts that we can check.

First, Hansen’s predictions from 1988 – Scenario B, which is close to the actual GHG growth which has occurred, is off by about 0.4C 50% – Scenario C, in which GHGs stop growing in the year 2000, is actually too high as well (but a better a forecast it seems).

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5277/hansenscenariobandc.png

Second, in 2005, GISS put its Model E on-line and although the hindcast stopped in 2003, one can extend its components fairly easily. Off by 0.35C 40% in just 5 years.

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/478/modeleextra.png

I downloaded the climate forecasts GISS submitted to the IPCC AR4 from the Climate Explorer. They submitted several runs from 3 different models and they are all off by 0.25C 40% in just 3 years.

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/7442/gissar4forecasts.png

Now extend this (20 year, 5 year and 3 year) error rate out for another 90 years and imagine the accuracy.

=====================================

In my opinion, this is what happens when you believe your own 'adjustments' of the original raw data.
It's also worth noting that in order to get GISS's model to correctly hindcast, completely spurious 'aerosol forcings' have to be cooked into the books to get the model to match the data. More on those another time, but google "hoyt pyrheliometer"

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-29, 07:23 AM

You told me ISSCP cloud data wasn't conclusive about 20 pages ago. I'm just going on what you said Ari. Maybe I shouldn't though, since you constantly flip flop like this.
Well, seeing lately how you have several times hinted that global warming might be due to clouds, I didn't think you had this in mind, especially as the ISCCP is not the only available cloud cover record.

Still waiting for your evidence.
I have give the evidence to you many times but you have ignored it. Here is my latest post on it (http://www.bautforum.com/1514761-post19.html).

The sunlight which penetrates 70 metres or so into the upper ocean and directly heats the water.
I guess you have missed the evidence showing that the Sun cannot be responsible for the long trend warming of the last century (Lockwood & Fröhlich, 2008 (ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/Publications/ProcRSocA_464_1367_2008.pdf)).

Sorry for the interruption Ari, but you still haven't explained how downwelling long wave IR from the atmosphere or conduction heats the ocean to any significant degree compared to direct solar absorption.
I gave you plenty of references on that, and suggested that perhaps you should (for once) do some of the homework yourself, but no.

Ok, here are couple of more references:

Alexander (1992) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/michael.alexander/alexander.part1_jclim_92.pdf) goes through the basics of the mechanism calculations. Dommenget & Latif (2000) (http://www.ifm-geomar.de/fileadmin/personal/fb1/me/ddommenget/paper/tropical.atlantic.pdf) suggest first that atmospheric forcing drives the changes in SST and ocean dynamics have a minor role. They then suggest that the main driver of the net heat flux is change in the latent heat flux. Then they say about the change in latent heat flux:

The response of the latent heat flux is basically due to the change in the strength of the trade winds that is caused by the warming over the SST anomalies
They also note that the same result has been found in other studies too.

Sorry to interrupt again Ari, but you still haven't presented any evidence that any significant increase in global air temperature is due to increased levels of co2 or the much stronger greenhouse gas, water vapor.
Like I said and showed above, I have done that several times. Why did you claim I haven't?

Oh, and since you once again try to emphasize that water vapor is much stronger greenhouse gas, I have to remind you that just a few days ago I already addressed this claim of yours (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-49.html#post1514954), and even presented a question about your claim about it, but you didn't have the courtesy to respond.

But ocean heat content has been flat and then falling slightly since 2003 according to Josh Willis' adjusted argo data, while atmospheric co2 has increased Ari.
Here's what Willis says himself (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php):

“So the new Argo data were too cold, and the older XBT data were too warm, and together, they made it seem like the ocean had cooled,” says Willis. The February evening he discovered the mistake, he says, is “burned into my memory.” He was supposed to fly to Colorado that weekend to give a talk on “ocean cooling” to prominent climate researchers. Instead, he’d be talking about how it was all a mistake.

If you are going to say that other natural variability can overcome the greenhouse effect for years on end, you need to say what these other natural factors are, and how they influence climate. Otherwise it looks a lot like handwaving.
Well, actually I have already showed you Easterling & Wehner (2009) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf) who show that within the theory of AGW there will be some periods of no warming or even cooling that can last even two decades.

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago, and add that since a lot of the oceans radiated heat gets convected up through cloud systems to altitudes where the molecules of co2 and water vapour are relatively rare, most of the alleged greenhouse effect is simply bypassed by the departing heat on it's way to space.
And I refer readers to my post few months ago (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-18.html#post1445949) where I addressed this claim once already. You ignored it.

All I know is that 'NASA scientists' say Mars has warmed 0.5C since the '70's according to the article I linked. And I said at that time that there was clearly a lot we don't know. I suggest you contact the NASA scientists concerned for a definitive answer. I suspect they are not so stupid that they didn't account for the known annual cycles mentioned in the paper you linked but we'll see.
Actually, most of the Fenton et al. study seems to be based on climate model runs. Their observational data is two snapshots (-> two datapoints). The blog entry I linked to showed how those datapoints were not very representative of the whole.

I think you were reluctant to get into heat transfer from atmosphere to ocean because you know it's dodgy ground for the AGW hypothesis. But I could be wrong. I'll see how honestly and completely you answer my points above and particularly the question of how much heat is transferred from atmosphere to ocean via it's 'skin' compared to direct solar insolation into the upper 70 metres before I form a firmer judgement on that.
It's just curious that always in situations like these you choose to suggest that people were dishonest when there are other possibilities. It's especially sad to see you throw insulting dishonesty accusations towards climate scientists time and time again without any evidence of dishonesty.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 07:51 AM

Here's what Willis says himself (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php):

Sorry Ari, out of time today, I'll address the rest of your post ASAP but I couldn't resist this one.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Since the (ARGO) system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.

Seems pretty significant to me, considering the timescales ocean heat content shifts on.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-29, 08:48 AM

Sorry Ari, out of time today, I'll address the rest of your post ASAP but I couldn't resist this one.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Since the (ARGO) system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.

Seems pretty significant to me, considering the timescales ocean heat content shifts on.
So, your linked article is from March 19, 2008, and the article I linked to is from November 5, 2008. They first corrected the Argo floats (from the article I linked to):

“First, I identified some new Argo floats that were giving bad data; they were too cool compared to other sources of data during the time period. It wasn’t a large number of floats, but the data were bad enough, so that when I tossed them, most of the cooling went away. But there was still a little bit, so I kept digging and digging.”
What happened was:

The digging led him to the data from the expendable temperature sensors, the XBTs. A month before, Willis had seen a paper by Viktor Gouretski and Peter Koltermann that showed a comparison of XBT data collected over the past few decades to temperatures obtained in the same ocean areas by more accurate techniques, such as bottled water samples collected during research cruises. Compared to more accurate observations, the XBTs were too warm.
And the end result:

But when he factored the too-warm XBT measurements into his ocean warming time series, the last of the ocean cooling went away.
Who's out of time?

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jun-29, 10:40 AM

I hope you will notice that my choice of timeframe in this plot is not a "cherry pick" from the top of the '98 el nino,and illustrates how far NASA GIStemp has strayed from agreement with the other three measures, including, "the highly respected British MET office" HADcru record.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.5/plot/uah/from:1997.5/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trend
Just for fun I tried that plot for years before and after the time you picked.

It's interesting that you claim it isn't a cherry-pick but you still managed to pick a time in the one range where GIStemp shows heating while the others show cooling:)

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-29, 11:12 AM

Just for fun I tried that plot for years before and after the time you picked.

It's interesting that you claim it isn't a cherry-pick but you still managed to pick a time in the one range where GIStemp shows heating while the others show cooling:)
I bet one could select proper time periods where one could single out each one of the four records showing warming or cooling when others go other way.

And this whole cooling thing is a cherry pick based on couple of anomalous temperature peaks; the warm 1998 El Nino peak and cool 2008 La Nina peak. See what happens when we look at Stroller's trend with slightly changed time interval. Stroller's graphs were from summer 1997 to present and they therefore contained both peaks. Let's eliminate the 1998 peak. Here's same graph from 1999 to present (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1999/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/plot/rss/from:1999/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1999/plot/gistemp/from:1999/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/trend). Trends are positive.

Let's then eliminate the 2008 peak. Here's same graph between 1997 summer and the end of 2007 (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.5/to:2008/plot/uah/from:1997.5/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.5/to:2008/plot/rss/from:1997.5/to:2008/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/to:2008/plot/gistemp/from:1997.5/to:2008/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/to:2008/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/to:2008/trend). Again trends are positive.

Finally, let's eliminate both peaks. Here's same graph from 1999 to the end of 2007 (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2008/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2008/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2008/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1999/to:2008/plot/gistemp/from:1999/to:2008/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/to:2008/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/to:2008/trend). Strong positive trends there.

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jun-29, 11:30 AM

Finally, let's eliminate both peaks. Here's same graph from 1999 to the end of 2007 (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2008/plot/uah/from:1999/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2008/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2008/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1999/to:2008/plot/gistemp/from:1999/to:2008/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/to:2008/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/to:2008/trend). Strong positive trends there.
And funny enough, in that interval it's the RSS trend that's the odd-one-out rather than GISTEMP which agrees quite well with the other two.

G O R T

2009-Jun-29, 11:43 AM

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 02:08 PM

So, your linked article is from March 19, 2008, and the article I linked to is from November 5, 2008. They first corrected the Argo floats (from the article I linked to):

Who's out of time?

You are.

Both articles are based on the paper Willis co-wrote in 2007 with Lyman, Johnson and Gilson.

Willis, J. K., Lyman, J. M., G. C. Johnson, and J. Gilson (2007a), Correction to “Recent cooling in the upper ocean”, 34, L16601, doi:10.1029/2007GL030323

The fact that Willis was candid enough to admit the cooling in March 2008, but had to re-tone his message by November says much about the way the AGW funding and propaganda machine works. This is agenda driven science and the minions have to stay on message.

Your quickness to jump to incorrect conclusions based on poor research is as revealing as it is unsurprising. It is also symptomatic of many on your side of the debate. There is too much we don't know about climate to be able to attribute the warming which took place between 1980 and 2005 to any one particular cause. To lay it at all the door of a trace atmospheric gas as the chief AGW hypothesis proponents have done is as stupid as it is incorrect.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 02:18 PM

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-29, 02:57 PM

Both articles are based on the paper Willis co-wrote in 2007 with Lyman, Johnson and Gilson.

Willis, J. K., Lyman, J. M., G. C. Johnson, and J. Gilson (2007a), Correction to “Recent cooling in the upper ocean”, 34, L16601, doi:10.1029/2007GL030323
You are wrong in that too. The study Willis talks about in the article I linked to is "In Situ Data Biases and Recent Ocean Heat Content Variability" - Willis et al. (2009) (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/lyman/Pdf/hc_bias_jtech_v1.pdf), Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 26, 4.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-29, 03:15 PM

Depending on the start point you choose, it's possible to use the data to show...

this is called cherry picking and it's considerd a bad, even dishonest practice.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 05:34 PM

You are wrong in that too. The study Willis talks about in the article I linked to is "In Situ Data Biases and Recent Ocean Heat Content Variability" - Willis et al. (2009) (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/lyman/Pdf/hc_bias_jtech_v1.pdf), Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 26, 4.

Wriggle as much as you like Ari, the fact remains that the ARGO data was corrected before the publication of the article I quoted in which he states that since the deployment of the ARGO network in 2003:
"There has been a very slight cooling"

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 05:44 PM

What Arrehenius, didn’t know at the time is what happens when CO2 “blocks” long wave IR. What happens is that the CO2 actually absorbs the photon promoting it to a higher quantum state. This decays very quickly, but how it decays depends on the atmospheric pressure. Lower in the atmosphere it’s most likely to lose that energy by colliding with another molecule. Higher up, however, when the energy state drops a photon will be emitted in a random direction, since this photon must have the same amount of energy as was originally absorbed it will be of the same wavelength but in random direction.

This trapped energy will move around, most of it eventually finding its way into the ocean.

I would be grateful to Lomiller1 if he would present any evidence he has for his statement that
"This trapped energy will move around, most of it eventually finding its way into the ocean."

Still waiting.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 06:31 PM

During the day the temperature of the atmosphere rises due to solar heating and heat starts to transfer from atmosphere to the ocean.

but you still haven't explained how downwelling long wave IR from the atmosphere or conduction heats the ocean to any significant degree compared to direct solar absorption.

I gave you plenty of references on that, and suggested that perhaps you should (for once) do some of the homework yourself, but no.

Ok, here are couple of more references:

Alexander (1992) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/michael.alexander/alexander.part1_jclim_92.pdf) goes through the basics of the mechanism calculations. Dommenget & Latif (2000) (http://www.ifm-geomar.de/fileadmin/personal/fb1/me/ddommenget/paper/tropical.atlantic.pdf) suggest first that atmospheric forcing drives the changes in SST and ocean dynamics have a minor role. They then suggest that the main driver of the net heat flux is change in the latent heat flux. Then they say about the change in latent heat flux:

You seem to be confused. According to our old friend wikipedia, Latent heat flux is the flux of heat from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere that is associated with evaporation or transpiration of water at the surface and subsequent condensation of water vapor in the troposphere.

What has this to do with downwelling IR radiation from the atmosphere to the ocean?

You and lomiller1 are the ones who claim the heat in the atmosphere mysteriously 'transfers' to the ocean, I do my homework and find that it doesn't to any significant extent, and when I ask you two to clarify your claims, you obfuscate and bluster, or don't reply at all.

Since the alleged heating of the ocean by the atmosphere is such an important cornerstone of the AGW hypothesis, I will wait until this issue is resolved before dealing with the rest of your post in which you made this claim.

PraedSt

2009-Jun-29, 07:03 PM

Just throwing a log onto the fire. :D

An article that claims that The Number of Skeptics is Swelling Everywhere (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html). This is of course a general non-scientific article; the usual caveats apply.

Warning: politicians are mentioned. I'll just quote the bit that discusses scientists.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence."

Gillianren

2009-Jun-29, 07:28 PM

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 07:39 PM

Does Joanne Simpson perhaps consider that, if she "spoke freely" about her doubts within the community, she might have gotten some real work done?

Perhaps she was in a better position to weigh her situation than you are Gillian.
Looking at what has happened to EPA whistle blower Alan Carlin, perhaps she was right too.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-29, 08:43 PM

Still waiting.

There is this thing you may have heard of called wind, its existence is not in doubt and as most people learn about it early in life proof of it’s existence is not likely to be found in the scientific literature.

Likewise there are these things called ocean currents. Though some children tend not to be aware of their existence, their existence is similarly not going to be something that will be proved in the scientific literature.

TBH I have no idea why you are demanding proof that these things actually exist.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-29, 08:48 PM

You and lomiller1 are the ones who claim the heat in the atmosphere mysteriously 'transfers' to the ocean,

Stop playing the idiot. Your hypothesis that the temperature of the atmosphere plays no role in the temperature of the ocean is absurd. Clearly you have made the deliberate decision to remain willfully ignorant of how this could happen.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 10:09 PM

There is this thing you may have heard of called wind, its existence is not in doubt and as most people learn about it early in life proof of it’s existence is not likely to be found in the scientific literature.

Likewise there are these things called ocean currents. Though some children tend not to be aware of their existence, their existence is similarly not going to be something that will be proved in the scientific literature.

TBH I have no idea why you are demanding proof that these things actually exist.

I don't doubt they exist, what I'm trying to explain to you and Ari is that the amount of heat energy transferred by them into the ocean is very small compared to the amount of energy absorbed by the ocean directly from sunlight. This heats the upper 100-300 feet of the ocean and then the ocean radiates long wave radiation into the atmosphere.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 10:15 PM

Stop playing the idiot. Your hypothesis that the temperature of the atmosphere plays no role in the temperature of the ocean is absurd. Clearly you have made the deliberate decision to remain willfully ignorant of how this could happen.
Calling me an idiot isn't going to change the fact that the ocean, with more than a thousand times the thermal capacity of the atmosphere is going to play a much bigger role in the temperature of the atmosphere than the atmosphere is going to play a role in the temperature of the ocean. The atmospheric tail does not wag the oceanic dog.

Long wave radiation from the atmosphere doesn't penetrate into the ocean. Short wave radiation from the sun goes straight through the atmosphere which is nearly transparent to it and warms the ocean. Long wave radiation from the ocean then penetrates and heats the atmosphere. At least Cope's schoolchildren will know this, even if you don't seem to be able to get your head round it.

cope

2009-Jun-29, 10:35 PM

parejkoj

2009-Jun-29, 10:37 PM

Just throwing a log onto the fire. :D

An article that claims that The Number of Skeptics is Swelling Everywhere (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html). This is of course a general non-scientific article; the usual caveats apply.

Warning: politicians are mentioned. I'll just quote the bit that discusses scientists.

I've gotta say, that log isn't going to burn very long. Their article couldn't even find anyone new!

Adding to Gillianren's comment:

1. Let's look more closely at (http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/more_on_inhofes_alleged_list_o.php) what Dr. Simpson actually said (http://climatesci.org/2008/02/27/trmm-tropical-rainfall-measuring-mission-data-set-potential-in-climate-controversy-by-joanne-simpson-private-citizen/), shall we? Oh, well, I guess that's not quite what the WSJ article intended.

2. Dr. Itoh (http://www.desmogblog.com/kiminori-itoh) has written a book (http://climatesci.org/2008/06/17/guest-weblog-by-dr-kiminori-itoh-of-yokohama-national-university/). But, I can't quite tell what to make of him (some of his strange comments in the linked post may be a problem of translation), and his area of expertise is rather far from climate science.

3. Dr. Giaever's expertise is solid state physics, and his pedigree there is certainly strong. But he doesn't seem to have published in climate science...

4. How many of the people on Inhofe's list (http://www.desmogblog.com/new-list-climate-quibblers-paid-deniers-dead-guys-and-ill-informed-fellow-travellers): a) are scientists of any kind, b) are in relevant fields, c) have published in peer reviewed journals in the past decade or two, and d) have *not* requested to be removed from the list? That last one is rather important, but I've been through (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-3.html#post1393322) all this before (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-10.html#post1429599).

5. And the less said about Plimer's (http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php) book (http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91) 'o lies (http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/global_warming/plimer/index.php?page=1), the better...

So, it looks like the WSJ's got absolutely nothing to add here, and is just repeating the same old, same old.

Stroller

2009-Jun-29, 10:58 PM

So I'm working on getting my head around the interchange of heat energy between the ocean and the atmosphere. My first quick foray via the Google takes me here (http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/o_atm.html) from whence I extract this:

"Solar Radiation: Much of the direct and diffuse solar short wave (less than 2 micros, mostly in the visible range) electromagnetic radiation that reaches the sea surface penetrates the ocean (the ocean has a low albedo, except when the sun is close to the horizon), heating the sea water down to about 100 to 200 meters, depending on the water clarity. It is within this thin sunlit surface layer of the ocean that the process of photosynthesis can occur. Solar heating of the ocean on a global average is 168 watts per square meter.

Net Back Radiation: The ocean transmits electromagnetic radiation into the atmosphere in proportion to the fourth power of the sea surface temperature (black-body radiation). This radiation is at much longer wavelengths than that of the solar radiation (greater than 10 micros, in the infrared range), because the ocean surface is far cooler that the sun's surface. The infrared radiation emitted from the ocean is quickly absorbed and re-emitted by water vapor and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases residing in the lower atmosphere. Much of the radiation from the atmospheric gases, also in the infrared range, is transmitted back to the ocean, reducing the net long wave radiation heat loss of the ocean. The warmer the ocean the warmer and more humid is the air, increasing its greenhouse abilities. Thus it is very difficult for the ocean to transmit heat by long wave radiation into the atmosphere; the greenhouse gases just kick it back, notably water vapor whose concentration is proportional to the air temperature. Net back radiation cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square meter."

A good starting point for conversation in my opinion.
Thanks Cope, that's useful. There are a couple of quirky bits though:

"Net back radiation cools the ocean on a global average by 66 watts per square meter."

Hmmmmm. Is this another way of saying the ocean radiates a net 66W/m^2 into the atmosphere? Presumably to prevent runaway heating of the ocean, the rest of the 168W/m^2 is lost via convective and evaporative processes via storm systems and the Eddy Flux with some help from those winds Lomiller1 mentioned. Except they help cool the ocean, not warm it up like he claims.

"Thus it is very difficult for the ocean to transmit heat by long wave radiation into the atmosphere; the greenhouse gases just kick it back"

http://cache.backpackinglight.com/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1225544577_08198.png

IPCC - NASA Chicken (http://cache.backpackinglight.com/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1225544577_08198.png)

PraedSt

2009-Jun-29, 11:44 PM

...Oops, I see that you guys have discussed most this before. Sorry. Although, in my defense, this thread is now over 50 pages long! :lol:

I was actually more interested in one line from that article, because it seemed odd.
Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans.Anyone got any?

parejkoj

2009-Jun-29, 11:54 PM

Oops, I see that you guys have discussed most this before. Sorry. Although, in my defense, this thread is now over 50 pages long! :lol:

No problem. But here's a hint for the future: any article that credulously mentions Inhofe's list should immediately raise suspicion.

The WSJ article was new, but the contents were not...

I was actually more interested in one line from that article, because it seemed odd.

Anyone got any?

Yeah, we're all waiting on that... we've been waiting for quite a while. Of course, one could claim that IPCC report itself "has debunked doomsday scenarios" since their conclusions were pretty well-measured. But then their conclusions about extinctions and rising sea level seem pretty "doomsday" to me, so I guess one could go either way here.

nauthiz

2009-Jun-30, 12:41 AM

Still waiting.

You yourself have pointed out several times that the thermal mass of the ocean is vastly greater than for the rest of the climate's components. (And, of course, 70% of the world's surface is water.) In light of that, I don't see why you would offhandedly question such a statement.

It's not like the world's oceans are inside a Thermos canister or something.

Joe Durnavich

2009-Jun-30, 03:14 AM

This graph from NASA would seem to answer in the affirmative.

Cope, I see that CO2 has been increasing the whole time, but the slope of the CO2 concentration from 1907 to 1945 that corresponds to the earlier warming period is quite different from the slope of the curve for the years 1971 to 2009 that corresponds to the later warming period. In fact, it changes suddenly near 1960 between the two different measurement methods. The slopes for those two time periods are roughly the same on the temperature graph, however.

Do we still draw the conclusion that the rise of CO2 is responsible for the earlier warming?

Carbon Dioxide Concentrations (http://aim.hamptonu.edu/library/p7hg_img_2/fullsize/co2graph_fs.jpg)
Global Temperature Change (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg)

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-30, 06:35 AM

According to our old friend wikipedia, Latent heat flux is the flux of heat from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere that is associated with evaporation or transpiration of water at the surface and subsequent condensation of water vapor in the troposphere.

What has this to do with downwelling IR radiation from the atmosphere to the ocean?
I already gave you references which explained that. Alexander (1992) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/michael.alexander/alexander.part1_jclim_92.pdf), which I linked to and you even included in your quote, shows how air temperature affects both the latent heat flux and sensible heat flux. First, they give net surface energy flux:

Q0 = Qsw - Qlw - Qsh - Qlh

where Qsw is the downward shortwave radiation (sunlight), Qlw is the upward longwave radiation (the thermal radiation from ocean), Qsh is the upward sensible heat flux, and Qlh is the latent heat flux. They give following equations for Qsh and Qlh:

Qsh = ρacpaCd|U|(To - Ta)

Qlh = ρaLvCd|U|(qs - qa)

where:
- ρa is density of air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density), which is a function of air temperature.
- cpa is specific heat of air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat).
- Cd is drag coefficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient).
- U is wind speed.
- To is the ocean temperature.
- Ta is the air temperature.
- Lv is latent heat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_heat) of vaporazion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporization).
- qs is humidity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidity) saturation value, which Alexander says is a function of ocean temperature.
- qa is humidity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidity) of air, which depends on air temperature.

So, air temperature affects both of these, and greenhouse effect (i.e. the "downwelling IR radiation") is known to affect Earth's surface air temperature. Dommenget & Latif (2000) (http://www.ifm-geomar.de/fileadmin/personal/fb1/me/ddommenget/paper/tropical.atlantic.pdf) show, like I already said, that the main driver of the net heat flux is the changes in latent heat flux, which according to them are mainly caused by "the change in the strength of the trade winds that is caused by the warming over the SST anomalies".

Nowhere in the paper is there any proposed mechanism for downwelling IR radiation to heat the ocean. There is simply an assumption that it must, in order to save the models.

Go ahead and show where the "assumption" is made in the paper.
Still waiting.

Co2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas compared to water vapor, which accounts for over 90% of the 'greenhouse effect'.

"Water vapor, which contributes 36–70%", but perhaps you will show your reference for the "over 90%" value, a denialist blog entry as usual?
Still waiting.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 06:44 AM

You yourself have pointed out several times that the thermal mass of the ocean is vastly greater than for the rest of the climate's components. (And, of course, 70% of the world's surface is water.) In light of that, I don't see why you would offhandedly question such a statement.

It's not like the world's oceans are inside a Thermos canister or something.

Selecta-spex turned up to max this evening Nauthiz?

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-30, 07:12 AM

Cope, I see that CO2 has been increasing the whole time, but the slope of the CO2 concentration from 1907 to 1945 that corresponds to the earlier warming period is quite different from the slope of the curve for the years 1971 to 2009 that corresponds to the later warming period. In fact, it changes suddenly near 1960 between the two different measurement methods. The slopes for those two time periods are roughly the same on the temperature graph, however.

Do we still draw the conclusion that the rise of CO2 is responsible for the earlier warming?

Carbon Dioxide Concentrations (http://aim.hamptonu.edu/library/p7hg_img_2/fullsize/co2graph_fs.jpg)
Global Temperature Change (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg)
Thompson et al. (2008) (http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/Thompson_etal_Nature2008.pdf) suggest interesting possibility for the mid-twentieth century cooling:

We argue that the abrupt temperature drop of ~0.3C in 1945 is the apparent result of uncorrected instrumental biases in the sea surface temperature record.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 07:18 AM

I already gave you references which explained that. Alexander (1992) (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/michael.alexander/alexander.part1_jclim_92.pdf), which I linked to and you even included in your quote, shows how air temperature affects both the latent heat flux and sensible heat flux. First, they give net surface energy flux:

Q0 = Qsw - Qlw - Qsh - Qlh

Yes, this is the equation used in the paper on the ocean heat balance I linked the other day.

So, air temperature affects both of these, and greenhouse effect (i.e. the "downwelling IR radiation") is known to affect Earth's surface air temperature.

I don't doubt it, but we weren't discussing surface air temperature, we were discussing your claim that:

During the day the temperature of the atmosphere rises due to solar heating and heat starts to transfer from atmosphere to the ocean.

It doesn't to any significant degree.

Dommenget & Latif (2000) (http://www.ifm-geomar.de/fileadmin/personal/fb1/me/ddommenget/paper/tropical.atlantic.pdf) show, like I already said, that the main driver of the net heat flux is the changes in latent heat flux, which according to them are mainly caused by "the change in the strength of the trade winds that is caused by the warming over the SST anomalies".

No Ari, the main driver of the net heat flux is the ocean, which is kicking out 168W/m^2 into the atmosphere through a combination of Qlw + Qsh + Qlh (which incidentally comes up 30W/m^2 short in the current ocean model).

The greenhouse gases (principally water vapour) and the winds, and the clouds modulate the rate at which this happens. They do not 'drive' ocean temperature by pushing heat into it as you claimed, they affect the rate at which it loses heat. And because the ocean is so much more thermally massive than the atmosphere, and it emits massively more amounts of energy gained from the sun through the atmosphere into space than the atmosphere absorbs from the sun, changes in co2 which is only 0.039% of the atmosphere make very little difference.

This is the key point you don't seem to get, and the difference between this and your scenario is important, as we will see.

Another key point to hold in mind is that as Cope's link points out, the ocean on the global average is 2C warmer than the atmosphere. A progression through the second law of thermodynamics and out into space shows you which way the heat is going.

Please acknowledge that the ocean heats the atmosphere more than the atmosphere heats the ocean before we move on.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 07:45 AM

Thompson et al. (2008) (http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/Thompson_etal_Nature2008.pdf) suggest interesting possibility for the mid-twentieth century cooling:

And in the usual high handed warmista way, they totally fail to acknowledge Steve MacIntyre's work on this issue at www.climateaudit.org the previous year.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3114
Nature "Discovers" Another Climate Audit Finding
by Steve McIntyre on May 28th, 2008

In an article in Nature today by Thompson, Kennedy, Wallace and Phil Jones claim:

"Here we call attention to a previously overlooked discontinuity in the record at 1945"

Well, folks, the discontinuity may have been overlooked by Hadley Center, CRU, NOAA and NASA and by the stadiums of IPCC peer reviewers, but it wasn't overlooked here at Climate Audit. The absurdity of Team bucket adjustments had been discussed in two early CA posts (here, here, here ). In March 2007, after publication of Kent et al 2007 showed the prevalence of buckets as late as 1970 (discussed here)...

They also botched the job, as you can see here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3116

and here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3123

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jun-30, 08:32 AM

I don't doubt it, but we weren't discussing surface air temperature, we were discussing your claim that:
No, I was answering your question about latent heat flux:

According to our old friend wikipedia, Latent heat flux is the flux of heat from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere that is associated with evaporation or transpiration of water at the surface and subsequent condensation of water vapor in the troposphere.

What has this to do with downwelling IR radiation from the atmosphere to the ocean?

No Ari, the main driver of the net heat flux is the ocean, which is kicking out 168W/m^2 into the atmosphere through a combination of Qlw+Qsh+Qlh...
I think you might have forgot the Sun here, if you really want to talk about net heat flux. If heat flux from the Sun is also 168 W/m2, then the net heat flux is zero. If you don't have any long term temperature trends, then the net heat flux is on average zero, but when you increase global surface temperatures by constantly adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, ocean also starts to warm.

The greenhouse gases (principally water vapour) and the winds, and the clouds modulate the rate at which this happens. They do not 'drive' ocean temperature by pushing heat into it as you claimed, they affect the rate at which it loses heat.
In other words they cause ocean to warm.

And because the ocean is so much more thermally massive than the atmosphere, and it emits massively more amounts of energy gained from the sun through the atmosphere into space than the atmosphere absorbs from the sun, changes in co2 which is only 0.039% of the atmosphere make very little difference.
All CO2 needs to do is to break the balance by rising the surface air temperature. Pierce et al. (2006) (http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/docs/pierce_et_al_jcli939_rev2B.pdf) show that the changes in anthropogenic forcing indeed make a clear difference. But you are welcome to show the research paper supporting your view.

And in the usual high handed warmista way, they totally fail to acknowledge Steve MacIntyre's work on this issue at www.climateaudit.org the previous year.
So do you think they should monitor all the woo-woo websites in the world to see if among all of that rubbish there sometimes might be something real? If McIntyre doesn't want to publish in scientific media, then what can we do?

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 09:04 AM

In other words they cause ocean to warm.

No, that's the sort of sloppy thinking which has led to the ludicrous mess climate science is in.
The sun causes the ocean to warm, the wind, clouds and water vapour predominantly affect it's rate of cooling. Co2 is pretty much along for the ride.

So do you think they should monitor all the woo-woo websites in the world to see if among all of that rubbish there sometimes might be something real? If McIntyre doesn't want to publish in scientific media, then what can we do?

Nature and Science won't publish anything which contradicts the party line.
Agenda driven science, intellectual dishonesty, peer pressure, threat of tenure and group cognitive dissonance rule, and you parrot papers which cite each other in complex circles ultimately grounded on a chimaera which reality is proving further wrong as time passes.

No wonder the ability to correctly forecast is so poor.

But never mind, you balance precariously on your house of cards, keeping those papers spinning on top of those sticks, and we'll get on with building a robust open source climatology.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 09:42 AM

I was actually more interested in one line from that article, because it seemed odd.

Quote:
Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans.

Anyone got any?

Try the NIPCC report. Lots of cited references there.
http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf

Extreme weather info starts page 281
extinction info starts page 579
malaria info starts page 668

I'd advise reading it for yourself, rather than paying attention to anyone else's comments regarding it.

G O R T

2009-Jun-30, 10:36 AM

And because the ocean is so much more thermally massive than the atmosphere, and it emits massively more amounts of energy gained from the sun through the atmosphere into space than the atmosphere absorbs from the sun, changes in co2 which is only 0.039% of the atmosphere make very little difference.

The oceans are a much bigger thermal sink than the atmosphere: no problem.

The oceans emit more thermal energy than the atmosphere absorbs from the sun: still with you.

Changes in CO2 make little difference: this one does not follow.

CO2, like water vapor, forms a one way blanket hindering the escape of long wave thermal energy at certain wavelengths. You can try to dispute this, but it has no connection with the other statements.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 11:34 AM

The oceans are a much bigger thermal sink than the atmosphere: no problem.

The oceans emit more thermal energy than the atmosphere absorbs from the sun: still with you.

Changes in CO2 make little difference: this one does not follow.

CO2, like water vapor, forms a one way blanket hindering the escape of long wave thermal energy at certain wavelengths. You can try to dispute this, but it has no connection with the other statements.

Hi GORT,
quite true, I asserted it on the basis of other stuff I've covered before in this very long thread.
There are good reasons to believe the climate sensitivity to co2 changes are badly overestimated by the IPCC and the climate modelers. You might try having a look at the Feedback Factors and Radiative Forcing section of the NIPCC document I linked in my reply to Praed St.

My main points in regard to this ocean balance stuff and co2 are that
1) Co2 doesn't get heated by sunlight on it's way through to the sea to any significant extent.
2) Most of the heat from the sea is convected up through clouds to altitudes where the co2 blanket effect is negligible due to the low density of the atmosphere. From there, the heat radiates mostly to space because it is reflected upwards off cloud tops.
3) The gas with the largest greenhouse effect, water vapour, forms more clouds when there is more of it in the air, which have a net cooling effect on the earth by increasing it's albedo.
4) Since the climate sensitivity claimed by the modelers relies largely on a large positive water vapour feedback to increased co2 which doesn't exist, the AGW hypothesis is falsified, or at least mostly mitigated by (3).
5)Even the modelers admit co2 can't do much on it's own, without the (non-existant) large positive feedback from water vapour.
6) The reason why modelers think clouds and water vapour are a positive feedback, is that in their atmosphere-centric view of the world, warmth is caused by clouds. This is incorrect, clouds are caused by warmth and dampness from the ocean. See Willis Eschenbach's essay below for the proof.

The key to the correct understanding of our climate is water, not co2.

Two essays worth reading with regard to these issues are;

1)Willis Eschenbach's 'Thermostat hypothesis' (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/). This is a really clear easy read which conveys the ideas well.
2)Stephen Wilde's 'Hot water bottle effect' (http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1487). Stephen has been a fellow of the Royal Meteorological society since 1968.

cope

2009-Jun-30, 11:38 AM

Do we still draw the conclusion that the rise of CO2 is responsible for the earlier warming?

Carbon Dioxide Concentrations (http://aim.hamptonu.edu/library/p7hg_img_2/fullsize/co2graph_fs.jpg)
Global Temperature Change (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg)

Joe, I don't want to be accused of ducking questions so I will answer yours.

Personally, I draw that conclusion, yes. Are the two curves identical: no, they are not. My original reply was simply an effort to fill in the CO2 curve prior to the 1960s which, I believe, was the question raised by the poster to whom I responded.

Frankly, I think I will take leave of this thread for a while. I am spending way to much of my summer vacation reading these posts, trying to make sense of some of them and then looking for additional information.

Everybody try to play nice.:)

Joe Durnavich

2009-Jun-30, 12:35 PM

Joe, I don't want to be accused of ducking questions so I will answer yours.

Personally, I draw that conclusion, yes. Are the two curves identical: no, they are not. My original reply was simply an effort to fill in the CO2 curve prior to the 1960s which, I believe, was the question raised by the poster to whom I responded.

Thanks, cope. I wasn't really asking anyone to state and back up their opinion on the matter. I was interested in knowing what the science had to say about the cause of the earlier warming.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 01:15 PM

Everybody try to play nice.:)

Cheers Cope, enjoy your holidays. :)

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 01:25 PM

Ivan Viehoff

2009-Jun-30, 01:35 PM

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 02:07 PM

Here is a link to Nature that has the pdf of Alan Carlin's paper. Be aware that the first 15 pages of the pdf are blank; huh.

98-page comment (http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/06/hot_air_and_politics_at_the_ep.html)

Why go to a publication like Nature which offers an inferior version when you can get the uncut version from the website which broke the story? ;)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/released-the-censored-epa-document-final-report/

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 02:27 PM

After these long arguments, I feel worried about wading in. Seems to be wood and trees.

What matters for us is the surface temperature. It seems to me that Stroller is saying that the deeper ocean is in poor thermal contact with the surface/atmosphere. In which case then the heat capacity/content of the deeper ocean has very little impact on the surface temperature. So what, in Stroller's world, if the deeper ocean has a heat capacity much larger than the atmosphere? The solid earth has an even larger heat capacity. Both of them are, apparently, in poor thermal contact with the surface.

If the ocean is opaque at a given wavelength, then not only can it absorb only at the surface, it can also radiate only at the surface, at that wavelength. So it works both ways. But opacity is a common situation. Even opaque surfaces can have low albedo.

The Bad Meteorologist says:
"Curiously, the surface of the Earth receives nearly twice as much energy from the atmosphere as it does from the Sun."
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadGreenhouse.html

I don't know the Bad Meteorologist's source on that, I'm willing to take that much on trust. I would be surprised if the (solid, opaque) land proved a better absorber of infrared than the ocean (opaque to infrared).

Hi Ivan,
An important fact the writer at your link omits is that a lot of the radiation coming out of the atmosphere onto the surface came out of the ocean shortly before that. The ocean is emitting an average of about 170W/m^2 day and night and this warms the lower part of the troposphere up. A lot of this heat is then re-radiated by the atmosphere back onto the land and ocean surface.

You may have noticed that the air pretty warm down on a tropical beach at night due to humidity and emitted ocean heat. But if you jump in a car and drive up a 5000 foot high mountain road, it's pretty chilly up there at night even in the tropics, because the atmosphere is drier and loses heat to space pretty quickly too. In fact, it's pretty cold in the shade even during a sunny day at higher altitudes, so this should tell you sunlight passes through dry air without warming it much.

The deep southern ocean is about 2C, warmer than the near surface waters. How does that heat get down there? There are places and times that ocean water does shift downwards and upwards in large volumes.

The Sun is putting out around 1365W/m^2 at the exosphere, but because half of earth is facing away from the sun, and is a tilted sphere, only about a quarter of that is incident. Half the globe is covered in cloud and around 7% in ice, half of which is in sunlight (half of half because of cloud actually).

So only about 200W/m^2 get through the atmosphere (which is pretty transparent to shortwave sunlight) to hit the surface. The land chucks most of that back into the atmosphere after the soil has warmed in spring, but the 70% of the globe covered in ocean readily absorbs sunlight down to a depth of 50 metres or so and is warmed.

It needs to lose about the same amount to stay at a fairly even surface temperature, and this is how the atmosphere gets warmed. 66W/m^2 is emitted by the ocean as long wave IR, and the rest gets out via latent heat of evaporation and convection. This warms the atmosphere which re-radiates it in all directions apart from the convected heat which goes straight up through storm clouds and thermal columns. The re-radiated heat can't get back into the ocean which as you point out is opaque to IR, but it does cause extra surface evaporation which the wind helps up into the atmosphere.

So in summary, the sun warms the oceans and land, the oceans keep a lot of it and lose it overnight as well as during the day, which keeps the lower troposphere warm, before the heat rises and is lost to space.

The earth would be a lot colder without water vapour to trap ocean emitted heat, and co2 does a bit of that too. However, the amounts of energy being shifted, alot of which bypasses the co2 effect, are so enormous that a 30% rise in co2, which is only 0.039% of the atmosphere doesn't make much difference, and what difference it does make is easily overcome by even a very small percentage increase in cloud cover, as we have seen in the last 8 years or so. Check out Palle et al and the earthshine project.

I highly recommend this essay to you:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/

Very readable and clear, with some real insight.

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 02:36 PM

Why go to a publication like Nature which offers an inferior version when you can get the uncut version from the website which broke the story? ;)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/27/released-the-censored-epa-document-final-report/

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf

Thanks for the better version and because it was what I found.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 03:15 PM

What matters for us is the surface temperature. It seems to me that Stroller is saying that the deeper ocean is in poor thermal contact with the surface/atmosphere. In which case then the heat capacity/content of the deeper ocean has very little impact on the surface temperature.

He’s following the propaganda points almost word for word, and what those are all about is saying that CO2 in the atmosphere can’t cause the ocean to heat up, and if the ocean doesn’t heat up you can’t get any warming.

Clearly this would violate conservation of energy, because if heat is trapped in the atmosphere by CO2 it *must* go someplace, so we know from the outset that the idea is absurd.

The second thing that is clearly wrong is that this hypothesis assumes that heat I introduced at the surface can’t be carried further into a liquid by conduction or convention. Take any cold liquid and place it in a room and it warms up. In this scenario all the heat is introduced at the boundary between either the air or the container, and distributed mostly though the liquid mostly via conduction. On the ocean you also get significant mixing of that top boundary due to the effect of wind/waves. Water, it actually quite good at exchanging heat with other materials and conducting it. Not the best, perhaps, but still quite good. It is, afterall, the most commonly used coolant in the world.

The third thing that is wrong is that it assumes CO2 looses IR mostly due to emission of photons. This is true in the upper atmosphere, but not in the lower. In the lower atmosphere when CO2 absorbs a photon that energy is more likely to be released via collision with another molecule. There is still some back radiation, but basically the whole “oceans can’t absorb IR” is a strawman from the start, and still wrong at that.

What really happens depends somewhat on air vs ocean temperature. If the air is warmer heat is absorbed at the surface and carried downwards via conduction or convection, just as in the case of a cold liquid in a warm room.

If the ocean is warmer, which is sometimes the case, what IR does reach the water acts much like a heat lamp. When you have a hamburger under a heat lamp, the lamp doesn’t warm the hamburger, rather it balances the IR the hamburger is giving off creating a radiative equilibrium. Since the heat in the hamburger has no other way to escape, it stays warm. A similar thing happens in the ocean, but in that case the system isn’t’ closed, you still have sunlight warming the water, but that energy can’t escape as readily. This retained energy , then, causes temperatures to go up.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 03:19 PM

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 03:36 PM

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 04:06 PM

Gee, Watts is pushing another paper full of “flaky” science written by people with no credentials in climatology. What a surprise!

Seriously, when, someone in the EPA with no credentials writes a really bad paper what do you expect them to do? Personally I have no qualms about them not wanting to be connected to bad science.

This is flaky science how?

So, in the rapidly evolving field of climate change, by grounding its TSD in the IPCC AR4 the EPA is largely relying on scientific findings that are, by early 2009, largely 3 years or more out of date. The six developments described here, which to my knowledge are not described in the Draft TSD should in my view significantly influence any assessment of “vulnerability, risk, and impacts” of climate change within the U.S. Therefore, the extensive portions of the EPA’s Endangerment TSD which are based upon the old science are no longer appropriate and need to be further revised.

Carlin page 16

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 04:27 PM

This is flaky science how?

Flaky was in quotes because your own link called it as much. Yes, I’ve read the paper and it’s pretty bad, basically just a regurgitation of blog postings. For the summery you can check out realclimate (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/#more-691).

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 05:17 PM

Flaky was in quotes because your own link called it as much. Yes, I’ve read the paper and it’s pretty bad, basically just a regurgitation of blog postings. For the summery you can check out realclimate (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/#more-691).

I did. Thanks for the link. However, in reading through the "comments" one can see a clear political bias.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 05:37 PM

I did. Thanks for the link. However, in reading through the "comments" one can see a clear political bias.
I managed to get one comment out of four past the realclimate censor. And that was simply to advise people to read it for themselves.

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 05:40 PM

I managed to get one comment out of four past the realclimate censor. And that was simply to advise people to read it for themselves.

Saw that. It stood out.

Edit: But, the political "moron" comment made it though.

Edit2: But isn't Realclimate a blog?

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 05:42 PM

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 05:55 PM

Just out of curiosity:

1. What exactly are credentials in climatology? I presume physicists, chemists, geologists and mathematicians count. Any other stream?

2. I presume blogs are acceptable sources, and the only source of contention is with the author? We don't like blogs just because they're blogs, do we?

1. IMHO it is a multidisciplinary science.

2. We are a blog IMHO, just less biased (because of rules..yeah) and more structured.

lomiller1 said:

Flaky was in quotes because your own link called it as much. Yes, I’ve read the paper and it’s pretty bad, basically just a regurgitation of blog postings.

So, I guess it depends on whether you agree with the bias of the blog as to whether it is good or bad.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 05:55 PM

However, in reading through the "comments" one can see a clear political bias.
When one sees “political bias” on the part of a scientist with dozens of papers some of which have hundreds of citations when he is discussing his field of expertise then I would suspect the bias in fact belongs to the reader.

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 06:02 PM

When one sees “political bias” on the part of a scientist with dozens of papers some of which have hundreds of citations when he is discussing his field of expertise then I would suspect the bias in fact belongs to the reader.

I respectfully disagree because I think scientists should avoid political interjections entirely.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:03 PM

Edit2: But isn't Realclimate a blog?

Personally I generally have no problems with considering the blog posts from people with legitimate claim to expertise. In fact such postings can be extremely informative. The contributors at realclimate all have an extensive list of papers published in high impact journals to their credit, it would be foolish to discount anything they had to say on the subject of climate.

I certainly do object to the practice of holding people with no relevant credentials up as experts simply because they say what you want to hear. Lets face it, there is nothing at all in Watts resume that would convince someone like Stroller he was any form of authority on climate if he wasn’t saying things that Stroller already believed.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:08 PM

I respectfully disagree because I think scientists should avoid political interjections entirely.

If someone makes a politically based attack on a scientific issue it’s scientists not only have the right, but indeed the responsibility to say that attack is purely political with no scientific backing. Where would we be today if biologists had simply refused to take a stand on political opposition to evolution?

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 06:16 PM

A similar thing happens in the ocean, but in that case the system isn’t’ closed, you still have sunlight warming the water, but that energy can’t escape as readily. This retained energy , then, causes temperatures to go up.

Blimey, I think he's almost 'got it' finally.

Yes. changing conditions in the various climate factors which affect evaporation, convection (upwards) and cloud cover affecting insolation levels, plus the multi-decadal oscillations, can cause the ocean heat content to go up.

And down, as Josh Willis has been seeing since 2003 with the corrected data from the ARGO network.

;)

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 06:18 PM

It's a bit late for the outside world, but I think we here should stick to the maths, rather than focus on credibility, politics, blogs, and what he said about our Aunt Susan.

EDIT: I also realize I'm late to this thread. I'm sure this point has been made countless times already.

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 06:19 PM

If someone makes a politically based attack on a scientific issue it’s scientists not only have the right, but indeed the responsibility to say that attack is purely political with no scientific backing. Where would we be today if biologists had simply refused to take a stand on political opposition to evolution?

Ahh.. yes I agree.

It is when they use science to support a political point of view that I can, but not always, have an issue.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 06:20 PM

If someone makes a politically based attack on a scientific issue it’s scientists not only have the right, but indeed the responsibility to say that attack is purely political with no scientific backing. Where would we be today if biologists had simply refused to take a stand on political opposition to evolution?

Well said Lomiller1 !!

So you'll agree that it's entirely wrong of the EPA to make a politically motivated attack on one of it's scientists simply because his interpretation of the data is at odds with the administrations preferred hypothesis.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:20 PM

Just out of curiosity:

1. What exactly are credentials in climatology? I presume physicists, chemists, geologists and mathematicians count. Any other stream?

Climatology is a multidisciplinary field, so there are quite a few different specialties that can make legitimate contributions. In the case of the contributors to realclimate, however, their publication record is so extensive that it’s impossible to discount them.

For example, look at the number of recent papers Gavin Shmidt has written or co-written.

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&lr=&sa=G&oi=qs&q=climate+author:g-schmidt

2. I presume blogs are acceptable sources, and the only source of contention is with the author? We don't like blogs just because they're blogs, do we?

As I said, I find the blog postings from legitimate experts highly informative. Blog postings from people with no such record and whose claims actually contradict the published science I have a great deal or trouble with.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:25 PM

Well said Lomiller1 !!

So you'll agree that it's entirely wrong of the EPA to make a politically motivated attack...

Clearly, the EPA ignored the paper because it was pseudoscientific crap. This is not an attack political or otherwise just the natural filtering of material that isn't sufficient quality to take public.

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 06:29 PM

Clearly, the EPA ignored the paper because it was pseudoscientific crap. This is not an attack political or otherwise just the natural filtering of material that isn't sufficient quality to take public.

I disagree, Carlin's boss did not feel it was the right time in the process. IMHO that means it did not support their agenda.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 06:30 PM

Personally I generally have no problems with considering the blog posts from people with legitimate claim to expertise. In fact such postings can be extremely informative. The contributors at realclimate all have an extensive list of papers published in high impact journals to their credit, it would be foolish to discount anything they had to say on the subject of climate.

I certainly do object to the practice of holding people with no relevant credentials up as experts simply because they say what you want to hear. Lets face it, there is nothing at all in Watts resume that would convince someone like Stroller he was any form of authority on climate if he wasn’t saying things that Stroller already believed.

Anthony Watts doesn't claim to be an authority on climate, unlike the clueless loudmouths you find hanging around realclimate. He does however regularly host articles written by published climate scientists, and essays by amateur researchers with some insight. These are discussed in the company of some very well known individuals with many peer reviewed papers to their name, and we all learn in the process.

Todays most recent article is by a previously published scientist who is so fed up with the broken peer review process, he has decided to publish on Watts site and conduct the review in the open.

Looks like Ben Santer is going to get some crit too. :)

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:32 PM

Ahh.. yes I agree.

It is when they use science to support a political point of view that I can, but not always, have an issue.

I’m not sure where you are going with that. The science says what it says, if one side in the endless political debates chooses to dispute it, it isn’t the scientist who is taking a political stance.

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:37 PM

He does however regularly host articles written by published climate scientists

Then why do you always need to link to Watts site? If these people have peer reviewed papers to their name that back up what they are saying why not link to the papers?

Todays most recent article is by a previously published scientist who is so fed up with the broken peer review process, he has decided to publish on Watts site and conduct the review in the open.

How many times have you heard the proponents of some crackpot theory claim they were taking their case directly to the public because “the scientific establishment” was suppressing their ideas?

lomiller1

2009-Jun-30, 06:41 PM

I disagree, Carlin's boss did not feel it was the right time in the process. IMHO that means it did not support their agenda.

How do you reach that conclusion? Even taking that at face value, IMO he’s obviously saying that he isn’t willing to release it because it’s inconsistent with the literature, but leaving the door open in some support can be found.

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 06:43 PM

Try the NIPCC report. Lots of cited references there.
http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf

I'd advise reading it for yourself, rather than paying attention to anyone else's comments regarding it.
Oops, I missed this. Thanks Stroller.

I know I asked for "peer reviewed", but I'm really more interested in seeing if the maths is correct. After that, we're just arguing about coefficients, right?

Yeah, we're all waiting on that... we've been waiting for quite a while. Of course, one could claim that IPCC report itself "has debunked doomsday scenarios" since their conclusions were pretty well-measured.I'll do the same with this as well. Last time, I just read the conclusions and left it at that.

Thanks, both of you. :)

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 06:51 PM

How do you reach that conclusion? Even taking that at face value, IMO he’s obviously saying that he isn’t willing to release it because it’s inconsistent with the literature, but leaving the door open in some support can be found.

Quote is from Fox news (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/gop-senator-calls-inquiry-supressed-climate-change-report/)of Carlin's boss.

McGartland, though, wrote back the next day saying he had decided not to forward his comments.

"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."

All I can say is I fear the "policy" that could ensue being justified by incomplete science. Science is always ongoing and incomplete and the politicians will do what politicians do, which is not science.

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 06:59 PM

1. IMHO it is a multidisciplinary science.

Climatology is a multidisciplinary field, so there are quite a few different specialties that can make legitimate contributions.I hope you two noticed that you actually agreed on something here. :lol:
And I'm glad about your conclusions, because I'm no climatologist.

As for the blogs, I don't mind them per se; it's just that I've noticed that climate blogs on both sides tend to be very rude and condescending. It puts me off. I'll stick to reading equations, they never call me silly.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 07:04 PM

John Christy's submission to the EPA is worth a read.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EPA_ChristyJR_Response_2.pdf

“Facts” about the climate system are only “assertions” until proven beyond doubt to be
real (with error bars) by testing. The EPA has relied almost exclusively on consensus
documents (e.g. IPCC and CCSP) as the origin of their “facts”. I have served as a Lead
Author of both the IPCC and CCSP reports and will demonstrate with published data that
these reports are not always “factual” but written (a) to give the impression of certainty
where large uncertainty is the reality or (b) to actually suppress results which run counter
to the more alarming conclusions. And, more importantly, the “consensus” exercise is a
false scientific process because the authors tend to write about their own publications and
are given the final review-authority of the products (i.e. this is not a peer-reviewed
process in the sense that the product could have a relatively high probability of being
rejected by independent reviewers. The selected authors KNOW their words will be
published since they have the “last word”.)
Indeed, the great majority of the IPCC authors were, on the one hand, not climate
scientists and were, on the other hand, pre-approved by their governments in a political
process (this is a pattern followed by the CCSP reports as well.) This should lead to
considerable caution when interpreting their statements – the reports had as their final
editors those who were appointed by the political process. Thus, scientific results
deemed inconsistent with personal views of the authors were far less likely to be
considered in the reports."

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 07:08 PM

I hope you two noticed that you actually agreed on something here. :lol:
And I'm glad about your conclusions, because I'm no climatologist.

As for the blogs, I don't mind them per se; it's just that I've noticed that climate blogs on both sides tend to be very rude and condescending. It puts me off. I'll stick to reading equations, they never call me silly.

I did and I agree with your second point up to the part about equations. Personally I just want to pursue what caused the ice ages and the paper you posted in the Geology thread pointed out very clearly that we do not know for sure and more research needs to be done, so what's new in that. We keep working.

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 07:20 PM

I did and I agree with your second point up to the part about equations. Personally I just want to pursue what caused the ice ages and the paper you posted in the Geology thread pointed out very clearly that we do not know for sure and more research needs to be done, so what's new in that. We keep working.That was a good paper wasn't it? I have questions to ask over in that thread, but first I have somehow to find the time to read it again. :(

jlhredshift

2009-Jun-30, 07:24 PM

That was a good paper wasn't it? I have questions to ask over in that thread, but first I have somehow to find the time to read it again. :(

I know you want to drool over the equations on the Null Hypothesis section.

Stroller

2009-Jun-30, 07:56 PM

Personally I just want to pursue what caused the ice ages and the paper you posted in the Geology thread pointed out very clearly that we do not know for sure and more research needs to be done

John, I do have some thoughts about that, which resurfaced after I replied to your PM. Specifically about the shift from 45,000 year periodicity to 100,000 year periodicity of interglacials.

The precessionary period is in a fairly close 1:2:4 ratio. There is secondary factor triggering interglacials along with the north pole being sunwards at earth perihelion.

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jun-30, 09:15 PM

William

2009-Jun-30, 10:51 PM

The global average temperature anomaly (satellite) continues to show evidence of global cooling. Yes, modest cooling to date.

How significant a drop in planetary temperature is required for a paradigm change in belief? -0.5C? -1.0C? If the cooling trend continues, I am curious as to the process and time lags for the paradigm to change.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/uah_may09.png

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/uah_may09.png

The Greenland Ice Sheet surge has abruptly stopped. If this is a Heinrich Event following the abrupt stoppage of the ice surge, is an abrupt drop in temperature. Heinrich events are cyclic and there is coincidental cosmogenic isotopes changes with Heinrich events.

Why did the Greenland Ice Sheet surge? Why did 14 ice sheet surges abruptly stop? The Heinrich researchers had the same question. The Heinrich ice surges are from geographically separate ice sheets. Due to the geographic separate and the time lag to start and stop ice surges there was no known mechanism that could simultaneous start and abruptly stop the Heinrich ice surge.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/323/5913/458a

http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/greenlands-ice-armageddon-comes-end

“It has come to an end,” Murray said during a session at the meeting. "There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off " of the speed-up, she said. Based on the shape and appearance of the 14 largest outlet glaciers in southeast Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000 nearly everywhere. “There's a pattern of speeding up to maximum velocity and then slowing down since 2005," Murray reported. “It's amazing; they sped up and slowed down together. They're not in runaway acceleration.”

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 11:04 PM

William

2009-Jun-30, 11:18 PM

I know something about charts William, and if that were a stock, I'd say "bull market". Temperatures are going higher.

Now it does hint at a trend change, that's true. But it only hints, nothing more. There appears to be a 4yr cycle there, amongst others. I don't think you should say the trend is cooling, until you've observed where the peak of the next one comes in.

Yes the proof of an abrupt drop in planetary temperature, will be an abrupt drop in planetary temperature.

My point is the past interglacial periods ended abruptly, not gradually and there is evidence of cyclic abrupt climate changes throughout the paleoclimatic record, including the current interglacial period.

http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/geog41066/7-Overpeck.pdf

Abrupt climate changes are not restricted to cold-climate background states. A growing body of evidence documents abrupt changes in the climate of the Holocene (the past 11.6 kyrs) and even in the instrumental record of the past century. Such changes occur both in temperature and especially in hydrologic balance, with the abrupt onset of drought a particular concern. These observations confirm that abrupt change must be considered as we work to anticipate how climate will change in the near future, in response to ongoing anthropogenic forcings.

Abrupt shifts between warm and cold states punctuate the interval between 20 to 75 ka) in the Greenland isotope record, with shifts of 5◦–15◦C occurring in decades or less (Figure 1). These alternations were identified in some of the earliest ice core isotopic studies [e.g., (22)] and were replicated and more precisely dated by subsequent work (23). Further analysis of diverse records has distinguished two types of millennial events (13). Dansgaard/Oeschger (D/O) events are alternations between warm (interstadial) and cold (stadial) states that recur approximately every 1500 years, although this rhythm is variable. Heinrich events are intervals of extreme cold contemporaneous with intervals of ice-rafted detritus in the northern North Atlantic (24–26); these recur irregularly on the order of ca. 10,000 years apart and are typically followed by the warmest D/O interstadials.

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 11:27 PM

Yes the proof of an abrupt drop in planetary temperature, will be an abrupt drop in planetary temperature.

My point is the past interglacial periods ended abruptly, not gradually and there is evidence of cyclic abrupt climate changes throughout the paleoclimatic record, including the current interglacial period.You addressed interglacials in the second half of your post. I no zilch about them, so I didn't comment.

I do, however, know how to read a chart. You brought it up as "The global average temperature anomaly (satellite) continues to show evidence of global cooling. Yes, modest cooling to date." The chart you posted shows nothing of the sort. At best it's inconclusive.

PraedSt

2009-Jun-30, 11:38 PM

nauthiz

2009-Jul-01, 12:17 AM

The global average temperature anomaly (satellite) continues to show evidence of global cooling. Yes, modest cooling to date.

To my eyeballs, the 1980-1986 cooling trend looks a whole lot clearer and more compelling. Bigger dip, too.

William

2009-Jul-01, 01:07 AM

But this is an interesting chart nevertheless.

Does anyone know what's behind this 4-5yr temperature cycle? I assume it's been covered already in this thread, so apologies in advance. A link to the relevant post would suffice. Thanks.

I have not seen an explanation.

Using a negative feedback mechanism for clouds (when the planet is warmer there are more clouds which cools the planet and when it is colder less clouds which warms the planet) and a lag time for the ocean surface temperature of 5 years would explain the observation.

William

2009-Jul-01, 01:27 AM

To my eyeballs, the 1980-1986 cooling trend looks a whole lot clearer and more compelling. Bigger dip, too.

Yes, however, based on the mechanisms (These abrupt climate changes have happen before and are pseudo cyclical.) and the current extraordinary cold night time temperatures both hemispheres, I would expect a bigger dip is on the way.

To me its was and is obvious that there is an external forcing function rather than an internal forcing function that is causing the abrupt climate changes.

The recent finding that the ocean thermal haline circulation system does not exist should be the end to the internal forcing function hypothesis which posited a change to ocean circulation systems to try and explain why the Antarctic gradually warms when there is the abrupt cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in addition to the abrupt cooling in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ignoring the problem that detailed ocean current studies shows there is no deep flow, the energy moved in the ocean currents is an order of magnitude too small to explain the abrupt cooling observations and the energy transported by the ocean does not affect the correct locations. In addition to an order magnitude problem with energy there is no mechanism to cyclically start and stop the ocean currents. It is quite amazing that the thermal haline theory persisted.

The cloud hypothesis explains the observations with an increase in planetary cloud cover both hemisphere.

As the albedo of the Antarctic is so high an increase in cloud cover causes warming in the Antarctic rather than cooling. Svensmark provides ice core thermal data over the last 2000 years to support the hypothesis. (It appears if solar changes are the explanation that there is a regular solar cycle of 1500 years, in addition to an abrupt solar interruption of 8000 to 10000 years.)

PraedSt

2009-Jul-01, 01:50 AM

I have not seen an explanation.
Thanks William. I'll look around see what I can find.

I've found a chart of surface temps. They also show this cycle.

By the way, what happened in 1998? Why the huge temp spike?

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 03:10 AM

Thanks William. I'll look around see what I can find.

I've found a chart of surface temps. They also show this cycle.

By the way, what happened in 1998? Why the huge temp spike?

The spreading out of heat which had been accumulating in the Pacific Warm Pool in the major el nino of the 30 year positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

William

2009-Jul-01, 04:00 AM

This is interesting. The ocean level has stopped rising, post 2006.

Contrary to folk lore, there is no physical explanation for the ocean level rising.

i.e. The ice sheets are not melting. The volume of water from melting mountain glaciers cannot explain the change in sea level. Planetary temperature has not changed enough to explain the change.

Curiously, the ocean level change tracks the solar magnetic cycle. When there are a large number of sunspots being produced on the sun, the ocean level increases when the sun is in a minimum and few sunspots are produced the ocean level falls. Although the solar magnetic cycle does affect planetary temperature, a change in planetary temperature cannot explain the observations.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pielke_slr_flat.png

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 04:42 AM

It's not quite flat William, but has certainly slowed it's rise a lot. There's a discussion on Roger Pielke's post on WUWT today you may be interested in. There is mention that Colarado University has added another 'adjustment' recently, which adds another 0.33mm/year. I guess they have to keep the storyline on message.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/30/roger-pielke-senior-on-real-climate-claims-bubkes/

Here is a peer reviewed paper which says the rate of sealevel rise has dropped 60% since 2005
http://www.ocean-sci.net/5/193/2009/
"These new calculations highlight a reduction in the rate of sea level rise since 2005, by ~2 mm/yr. This represents a 60% reduction compared to the 3.3 mm/yr sea level rise (glacial isostatic adjustment correction applied) measured between 1993 and 2005."

Those graphs you are posting are introducing bottom scroll bars on my browser. Any chance of making them a bit smaller?

PraedSt

2009-Jul-01, 04:52 AM

The spreading out of heat which had been accumulating in the Pacific Warm Pool in the major el nino of the 30 year positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.Ah, thanks. I'll go and read about that. I don't suppose you know what's behind the 4-5yr cycle? Words like "oscillation" sound promising. :)

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 04:55 AM

To my eyeballs, the 1980-1986 cooling trend looks a whole lot clearer and more compelling. Bigger dip, too.

Yeah, but that one was helped along by the effect of a big volcano. There are no big volcano's associated with the current fall in global temperature. Though we may get one in a fortnight or so.

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 05:11 AM

Ah, thanks. I'll go and read about that. I don't suppose you know what's behind the 4-5yr cycle? Words like "oscillation" sound promising. :)

There is no well defined 4-5 year cycle unless maybe you mean 5.5 years up plus5.5 years down. an 11 year cycle is clear in the temperature data, associated with the 11 year solar cycle. Also a 60 year oceanic cycle. You can see both of those on these graphs I produced which shows the link between heightened C20th solar activity and sea surface temperatures averaged over a full solar cycle and 1/3 solar cycle.

http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view&current=sst-nino-ssa.jpg

http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view&current=ssa-sst-ssn.jpg

For info on the el ninos and their effect on step changes in the global temperature record, go to Bob Tisdales site.

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html

PraedSt

2009-Jul-01, 05:35 AM

There is no well defined 4-5 year cycle unless maybe you mean 5.5 years up plus5.5 years down. an 11 year cycle is clear in the temperature data, associated with the 11 year solar cycle. Also a 60 year oceanic cycle.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.htmlOne cycle at a time. :D

Thanks for that. I was actually talking of the obvious cycle in Williams/UAH atmosphere temp chart, post #1660 above. You can also see it on that bob tisdale link you gave, Fig 13, right at the bottom. Different source it looks like, but same pattern.

Don't worry about it, I'll find out somehow...

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-01, 05:51 AM

Nature and Science won't publish anything which contradicts the party line.
Nature and Science are the only available publications then?

Agenda driven science, intellectual dishonesty, peer pressure, threat of tenure and group cognitive dissonance rule,...
And mind-control rays from weather satellites too, right?

...and we'll get on with building a robust open source climatology.
Yes, sure, we have seen hints of that here already. A climatology based on graph cooking (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/) and fact twisting (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/not-the-ipcc-nipcc-report/).

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 06:03 AM

One cycle at a time. :D

Thanks for that. I was actually talking of the obvious cycle in Williams/UAH atmosphere temp chart, post #1660 above. You can also see it on that bob tisdale link you gave, Fig 13, right at the bottom. Different source it looks like, but same pattern.

Don't worry about it, I'll find out somehow...

That "obvious cycle" is heavily influenced by two big volcanic erruptions in 1982 and 1991, El Chicon and Pinatubo. Bob's graphs have the sato index in green on them.

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 06:36 AM

Ari.

I'll let you carry on digging your pit in the same old hole while we work with continuous re-appraisal employing the scientific method.

Which is to find and present evidence which falsifies the present theory and then formulate a better one, in case you'd forgotten.

A task not made any easier by the reluctance of 'climatologists' who refuse to reveal their data (http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=66), manipulation algorithms and statistical techniques, in an attempt to thwart replication of their results and discovery of their methods.

Unlike the fully documented and openly reviewed work of a certain climate science journal published statistician whose website you write off as a "woo woo blog" (http://www.climateaudit.org).

Unfortunately we're also uncovering evidence of falsification and erroneous 'adjustment' (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6382) of primary data too.

Dr John Christy is one of the best qualified climate scientists in the world today, and he is saying (http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EPA_ChristyJR_Response_2.pdf) that:

"the “consensus” exercise is a false scientific process because the authors tend to write about their own publications...scientific results deemed inconsistent with personal views of the authors were far less likely to be considered in the reports."

Time to drop the rhetoric and do some real science again.

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jul-01, 07:14 AM

Anthony Watts doesn't claim to be an authority on climate, unlike the clueless loudmouths you find hanging around realclimate.

Ari.

I'll let you carry on digging your pit in the same old hole while we work with continuous re-appraisal employing the scientific method.
<snip>
Time to drop the rhetoric and do some real science again.
Actually, it's time you tone your language way down Stoller, you've been skirting an ad-hom suspension for several posts in this thread.

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 07:55 AM

Henrik, you're right. I need to step back and cool down. The final line of my post is as much an admonition to me as anyone else.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-01, 08:48 AM

Levitus et al. (2009) (ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf) show XBT- and ARGO-corrected ocean heat content, and it seems to have been rising a little even in last few years. Also, it was rising so rapidly in early 2000's that it would have been amazing if it would have continued at that pace.

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 09:50 AM

There are a couple of interesting analyses of Levitus et al 2009 here (http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/latest-revisions-to-ocean-heat-content.html) and here (http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/05/levitus-et-al-2009-ocean-heat-content.html).

The north Atlantic anomaly is a bit of a puzzle. maybe Bob is correct in saying it may be due to depth selection and the MOC.

I did run into some problems with Syd Levitus' work on ocean heat content a couple of years ago when trying to do some calcs.

I found out why here (http://groups.google.com/group/sci.geo.oceanography/browse_thread/thread/a59a3509ecef9344/34d38d81f1734eaf?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#34d38d81f1734eaf).

1] Warming of the World Ocean. Levitus et al, Science vol 287 2000
2] Anthropogenic warming of Earth's Climate System. Levitus et al,
Science v 292 2001
"Has anyone else here used the data presented in these papers? A
colleague and I have, but we cannot reproduce the net heat gain of
18.2 x 10^22 J in the worlds' oceans for the period 1955-1996 which
was mentioned in [2].

According to [2], this number comes from a straight line fit to the
5-year averaged ocean data from 1957.5 to 1994.5 (the year index
refers to the mid-point of the 5 year averages), extrapolated out to
cover the original 41 years 1955-1996. Ie a trend of 0.44 x 10^22 J
per year. The data are presented in Fig 4 of [1], and available from
the authors.

We get a much lower answer of 13.5 x 10^22 J, ie 0.33 x 10^22 J per
year. It's only a least squares fit, so I don't see what we could have
done wrong. But our number is a long way off the published value, and
also a long way short of the model result (which was 19.7 x 10^22 J).

James

> Have you contacted the authors?

Yes, I got the data from one of them in the first place, and he
explained how they had calculated the figure (the description in the
paper isn't brilliant). But as soon as I pointed out the error, he
stopped replying."

This around a 25% error.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-01, 10:49 AM

There are a couple of interesting analyses of Levitus et al 2009 here (http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/latest-revisions-to-ocean-heat-content.html) and here (http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/05/levitus-et-al-2009-ocean-heat-content.html).
Very interesting indeed... not. First of these is just the typical ooh-look-at-the-differences-in-these-graphs-there-must-be-something-strange-going-on type blogpost we so often find behind your links (we have already handled one similar from both McIntyre and Watts - neither had anything relevant to say). You claim that this is an analysis of Levitus et al. (2009), but I think Tisdale hasn't even read Levitus et al. beyond the pictures (Tisdale's source for this seems to be another blog so it is not a big surprise as these blogs are not famous for providing the full story). First, it is not very big revelation that there are differences between these two graphs because Levitus et al. (2009) (ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf) already presented the differences themselves, see their Figure S9 (which Tisdale also presents himself). Second, there's whole chapter in Levitus et al. (2009) with a title "3. Comparison With Other Estimates", that seems to have escaped Tisdale's notice. Let us consult the source of the first graph. Tisdale links to the same site I did earlier, the graph is found from page 4 (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page4.php), and it appears to be based on Domingues et al. (2008) (http://www.astepback.com/GEP/Nature%20Higher%20Warming%20SLR%20rates.pdf). Now, what does Levitus et al. say about Domingues et al.:

These estimates all use different processing methods and there are some differences in the data used. For example D08 do not use any MBT data in their study.
D08 being the Domingues et al. (2008). So, do you think that Tisdale should have looked at what Levitus et al. (2009) says, before "analysing" it?

G O R T

2009-Jul-01, 11:04 AM

...The key to the correct understanding of our climate is water, not co2.

Two essays worth reading with regard to these issues are;

1)Willis Eschenbach's 'Thermostat hypothesis' (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/). This is a really clear easy read which conveys the ideas well.
2)Stephen Wilde's 'Hot water bottle effect' (http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1487). Stephen has been a fellow of the Royal Meteorological society since 1968.

Although I find both articles are anecdotal in nature and bereft of any real info, I will look into this as time permits.

G O R T

2009-Jul-01, 11:27 AM

The recent finding that the ocean thermal haline circulation system does not exist should be the end to the internal forcing function hypothesis...

This is blatantly untrue!

Not only does thermohaline circulation (still) exist, but it has an approximate 1450 year component which aligns well with Dansgaard–Oeschger events.

Thermohaline downwelling in the North Atlantic can be seen from space!

Why would you say such a thing?

HenrikOlsen

2009-Jul-01, 12:03 PM

There's been recent findings that adjust our understanding of the thermohaline circulation, but that's not the same as saying it doesn't exist.

I suspect William wants it to not exist because if it doesn't, then the arctic ice isn't a major regulator of ocean temperature and the relatively small increase in ocean temperature can be used as "proof" that there's no warming.

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 12:33 PM

Very interesting indeed... not. First of these is just the typical ooh-look-at-the-differences-in-these-graphs-there-must-be-something-strange-going-on type blogpost we so often find behind your links
" "

One of the things I found interesting about Bob's post was that Levitus et al use measurements down to 700 metres. This is around the boundary layer between the surface waters and the thermocline in the ocean at mid latitudes.

In one of your earlier missives you said:

And mind-control rays from weather satellites too, right?

Yes, sure, we have seen hints of that here already. A climatology based on graph cooking (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/) and fact twisting (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/not-the-ipcc-nipcc-report/).
I went for a look at the first of these links and found a fairly nastily written ad hominem attack on Dr Roy Spencer written under the pseudonym of RayPierre, by Raymond Pierrehumbert, a 'theoretical climate modeler',

In it, one of his criticisms of Spencer's simple model, was that he deduced that Spencer had used a surface waters ocean depth of 'a kilometer!' rather than a figure of 50 meters such as he and Gavin thought a better figure.

So I got to wondering about that, and Syd Levitus' strange switch from using an increase of 18x10^22 J in ocean heat content between 1955 to 1994 which he fed to the IPCC in 2000, to the slightly more reasonable figure of around 6X18^22 J in his latest work. (James Annan had found a 25% error in Syd Levitus' arithmetic but Levitus' data still came out at 13x10^22 J).

It occurred to me that the sea level rise graph posted by William could be used to back calculate the average depth of the heat mixed surface waters using the specific heat capacity of water, average ocean salinity, global ocean area and temperature.

I've just run the calcs, and it turns out the depth is around 1000 meters, just like Dr Roy Spencer said. In his rebuttal to Raymond Pierrehumbert, he didn't press this point because he recognises that he is not an oceanographer. It's a pity Pierrehumbert doesn't realise he's not a climatologist.

So after all it turns out Gavin and Pierrehumbert are the ones cooking the graph, to try to smear Dr Roy Spencer.

Next we'll take a look at Syd Levitus and the mystery of the rapidly shrinking ocean heat content. I suspect from the foregoing calculations I did, that it'll turn out to have something to do with someones scary prediction for sea level rise back in 1998. We shall see.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-01, 02:43 PM

I went for a look at the first of these links and found a fairly nastily written ad hominem attack on Dr Roy Spencer written under the pseudonym of RayPierre, by Raymond Pierrehumbert, a 'theoretical climate modeler',
I only see an article exposing Spencer's graph cooking maneuvres, but I don't see anything "ad hominem" about it. Perhaps you should check what that term means.

In it, one of his criticisms of Spencer's simple model, was that he deduced that Spencer had used a surface waters ocean depth of 'a kilometer!' rather than a figure of 50 meters such as he and Gavin thought a better figure.
50 m doesn't seem to be bad estimate according to measurements (de Boyer Montégut et al., 2004 (http://www.lodyc.jussieu.fr/~cdblod/PUBLIC/ARTICLES/deBoyerMontegut_JGR2004.pdf), especially their Figure 5), 1000 m seems to be radically overestimated, as they also say in that RealClimate article:

To be sure, on the centennial scale, some heat does get buried several hundred meters deep in the ocean, at least in some limited parts of the ocean. However, to assume that all radiative imbalances are instantaneously mixed away to a depth of 1000 meters is oceanographically ludicrous.

...to the slightly more reasonable figure of around 6X18^22 J in his latest work.
I didn't find this number or anything resembling it from Levitus et al. (2009). I did find an indirectly given measured value of 10.88 * 10^22 J for the time period 1969-2003, which seems to be what given graphs also show.

So after all it turns out Gavin and Pierrehumbert are the ones cooking the graph, to try to smear Dr Roy Spencer.
Based on your undocumented calculation? Not with your posting history...

When are you going to back up your claim and show exactly where Pierce et al. are assuming that downwelling IR radiation heats the ocean?

When are you going to show where you got your claimed "over 90%" for the water vapor's part of the greenhouse effect?

You also have been ignoring almost everything in this post (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-53.html#post1518999), even though there are some previously given evidence pointed out that you were so loudly claiming I haven't given. It's curious how you were so demanding of the evidence, and then don't even have the courtesy to acknowledge that it has been given.

Oh, and how about answering the question in my last post: "So, do you think that Tisdale should have looked at what Levitus et al. (2009) says, before "analysing" it?"

William

2009-Jul-01, 02:52 PM

This is blatantly untrue!

Not only does thermohaline circulation (still) exist, but it has an approximate 1450 year component which aligns well with Dansgaard–Oeschger events.

Thermohaline downwelling in the North Atlantic can be seen from space!

Why would you say such a thing?

There is motion in the water. There is however no thermohaline conveyor. (See link below to Duke University news release that discuss a paper that has been published in Nature. Note this is not a new finding. This is the second investigation into this subject as people want to believe a thermohaline conveyor exists. Why else would it be discussed in text books?)

Science is the process of data gathering to create and test hypotheses. The great thermal haline conveyor is a myth.

As I stated, the thermal energy that is moved by the ocean currents is an order of magnitude too small to explain the abrupt cooling observations (See my comments and link to Seager et al. papers.) and the ocean currents only affects specific locations in the Northern hemisphere. The paleoclimatic data shows massive widespread cyclic climate change, concurrent with is cosomogenic isotope changes. There is no mechanism to turn the ocean currents on and off.

The polar see-saw where the Antarctic gradually warms when the Northern Hemisphere abruptly cools appears to be, as Svensmark's data and paper states, due to cyclic changes in the sun.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/du-cwo051309.php

Cold water ocean circulation doesn't work as expected

A 50-year-old model of ocean currents had shown this southbound subsurface flow of cold water forming a continuous loop with the familiar northbound flow of warm water on the surface, called the Gulf Stream.

"Everybody always thought this deep flow operated like a conveyor belt, but what we are saying is that concept doesn't hold anymore," said Duke oceanographer Susan Lozier. "So it's going to be more difficult to measure these climate change signals in the deep ocean."

And since cold Labrador seawater is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change, this finding may affect the work of global warming forecasters.

But studies in the 1990s using submersible floats that followed underwater currents "showed little evidence of southbound export of Labrador sea water within the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC)," said the new Nature report.

Scientists challenged those earlier studies, however, in part because the floats had to return to the surface to report their positions and observations to satellite receivers. That meant the floats' data could have been "biased by upper ocean currents when they periodically ascended," the report added.
To address those criticisms, Lozier and Bower launched 76 special Range and Fixing of Sound floats into the current south of the Labrador Sea between 2003 and 2006. Those "RAFOS" floats could stay submerged at 700 or 1,500 meters depth and still communicate their data for a range of about 1,000 kilometers using a network of special low frequency and amplitude seismic signals.

But only 8 percent of the RAFOS floats' followed the conveyor belt of the Deep Western Boundary Current, according to the Nature report. About 75 percent of them "escaped" that coast-hugging deep underwater pathway and instead drifted into the open ocean by the time they rounded the southern tail of the Grand Banks. Eight percent "is a remarkably low number in light of the expectation that the DWBC is the dominant pathway for Labrador Sea Water," the researchers wrote.

Studies led by Lozier and other researchers had previously suggested cold northern waters might follow such "interior pathways" rather than the conveyor belt in route to subtropical regions of the North Atlantic. But "these float tracks offer the first evidence of the dominance of this pathway compared to the DWBC."

William

2009-Jul-01, 03:17 PM

This is blatantly untrue!

Not only does thermohaline circulation (still) exist, but it has an approximate 1450 year component which aligns well with Dansgaard–Oeschger events.

Thermohaline downwelling in the North Atlantic can be seen from space!

Why would you say such a thing?

This the second part of my reply to your comment. My above comment provides a link to a Duke University news release that shows the thermohaline conveyor does not exist. (Water does circulate in the oceans but the circulation is not a conveyor.)

It has been known for the last 15 years that there are cyclic abrupt climate changes. Cooling and warming.

It has been known for decades that there are cyclic changes in the sun based on cosmogenic isotope changes on the earth. Those cosmogenic isotopes changes correlate with the abrupt climate changes on the earth.

What was not known is the mechanism(s) by which solar changes could effect the planet's temperature. Observed TSI changes (sun getting hot or colder) are too small to cause the change.

The competing mechanism to the solar modulation of planetary temperature was abrupt stoppage of the thermal haline conveyor, however, research have shown the energy transported by ocean currents is an order of magnitude too small to explain the abrupt cooling, there is no mechanism to stop and abruptly start the ocean currents, and the regions of the planet cool that are not affected by the ocean currents. That is long list of problems with the conveyor hypothesis. (Mechanism, cyclic timing, and so forth.)

Svensmark and others have provided data and published analysis to show solar modulation of cloud cover, could be the mechanism which causes the abrupt climate changes.

As the sun appears to be heading toward a Maunder minimum, we can observe the changes for ourselves, to see which hypothesis is correct.

http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/geog41066/7-Overpeck.pdf

Cold-climate abrupt change occurs with a characteristic timescale of approx. 1500 years, a feature that must be explained by any proposed mechanism. North Atlantic and the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) records exhibit a period of approx. 1470 years (64, 65). However, the adjacent ice core isotope record from the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) site exhibits periods closer to 1670 and 1130–1330 years, which is in agreement with the independently dated record from Hulu Cave (49, 66). Timeseries studies generally converge on a picture of a noisy climate system paced by a regular, perhaps external, forcing, with the sensitivity of the system to the forcing varying depending on background conditions or stochastic variability [e.g., (67–69)].

Solar forcing, although subtle, is the leading candidate for external forcing and has been found to be consistent with either a 1450–1470–year period (70, 71) or the 1667- and 1130-year periods (66). Alternatively, internal drivers (tropical or extratropical) may operate on a preferred millennial timescale. Ocean circulation, ice dynamics, and ENSO have all been suggested to operate with characteristic timescales near 1500 years (14, 58, 72). Moreover, ice core age models are under revision as other records suggest systematic chronologic errors in both GRIP and GISP (49, 73–75).

William

2009-Jul-01, 03:30 PM

Stroller

2009-Jul-01, 03:50 PM

I only see an article exposing Spencer's graph cooking maneuvres, but I don't see anything "ad hominem" about it. Perhaps you should check what that term means.

You just provided one against Spencer yourself Ari. Perhaps you don't realise how offensive your mode of discourse is. I notice Orion Jim wasn't prepared to put up with it.
In amongst the various insults to Dr Roy Spencer and his work in the (moderated) comments section I found this gem:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/#comment-87661

Here’s a statistical observation from those debates: the side employing a relatively higher personal focus in their attacks on the other side’s ideas is eventually proven wrong a higher percentage of the time.

I didn’t see anything personal in Spencer’s article, nor do I find it on Pielke’s site in general. But I do here, too often. You’re scientists, wage a war of facts and ideas, your readers will figure out for themselves who’s credible and why.

If I misunderstand the purpose of this site, if it’s just for the faithful to gather and reinforce themselves and have their jollies, please hang a big sign to that effect on your homepage.

50 m doesn't seem to be bad estimate according to measurements (de Boyer Montégut et al., 2004 (http://www.lodyc.jussieu.fr/~cdblod/PUBLIC/ARTICLES/deBoyerMontegut_JGR2004.pdf), especially their Figure 5), 1000 m seems to be radically overestimated, as they also say in that RealClimate article:

If the heat doesn't mix down to to the boundary layer, how come there is a boundary layer? The fact is, for the ocean to be rising to the extent indicated by the satellite altimetry, an awful lot more than 50 meters of it has to be expanding. My calculated 1000 meters will not be exact, but it's ball park. Gavin and Pierrehumberts 50 meters is at least an order of magnitude too small.

I didn't find this number or anything resembling it from Levitus et al. (2009). I did find an indirectly given measured value of 10.88 * 10^22 J for the time period 1969-2003, which seems to be what given graphs also show.

And a nicely cherry picked time period it is too. Anyway, scaling off the graph on the NOAA site because their ftp server isn't playing ball, the 1955-1996 rise is somewhere near the figure I gave. Having said that, scaling the 1969-2003 period of the same graph gives around 13x10^22J so who knows what the truth is.

Based on your undocumented calculation? Not with your posting history...

More insult. I hope Henrik is keeping score.

When are you going to back up your claim and show exactly where Pierce et al. are assuming that downwelling IR radiation heats the ocean?

When are you going to show where you got your claimed "over 90%" for the water vapor's part of the greenhouse effect?

You also have been ignoring almost everything in this post (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/70431-general-agw-discussion-thread-53.html#post1518999), even though there are some previously given evidence pointed out that you were so loudly claiming I haven't given. It's curious how you were so demanding of the evidence, and then don't even have the courtesy to acknowledge that it has been given.

I did acknowledge it Ari, and told you I would deal with it once you acknowledged the ocean heats the atmosphere more than the atmosphere heats the ocean, as I demonstrated to you. Take a look at the quote in William's post above this one. It's telling you the same thing. When are you going to accept the obvious?

Oh, and how about answering the question in my last post: "So, do you think that Tisdale should have looked at what Levitus et al. (2009) says, before "analysing" it?"

Why should I have to answer for your choice of rhetorical device? Get a grip.

William

2009-Jul-02, 01:08 AM

This is an interesting slide show. CERN has decided to proceed with a more sophisticated version of Svensmark’s SKY experiment. As Kirby notes, planetary warming has stopped in the last 5 years. If the CO2 hypothesis is correct there must be a counteracting global cooling mechanism(s).

http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=52576

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/kirkby_cern_slideshow09.pdf

I believe sufficient data and logical arguments (supported by papers) have been present in this forum to support the assertion that there is at least a horse race where the out come is uncertain as to which of the competing hypotheses/paradigms is correct. This is an important subject to continue to discuss, particularly if a paradigm shift is required.

Recent papers are disproving the fundamental mechanisms that were purported to have been the cause of the glacial/interglacial cycle and the abrupt climate changes in the paleoclimatic record. The general public is not aware of the change in the fundamental science or what has happened in the past from unequivocal analysis of the paleoclimatic record. It is a fact that the planet has in the past abruptly cooled. That fact deserves respect.

I have noticed prominent scientists in the solar field, metrological, and paleoclimatic have begun to position their scientific viewpoints and public comments to protect their reputation.

The recent planetary temperature data does not support the assertion that the planet is about to abruptly cool, however, the solar cycle does appear to be interrupted and there are anomalous record cold temperatures being set in both hemispheres. This is uncharted territory which makes an interesting and important discussion, as there is more data to prove or disprove the competing hypotheses.

jlhredshift

2009-Jul-02, 01:41 AM

Recent papers are disproving the fundamental mechanisms that were purported to have been the cause of the glacial/interglacial cycle and the abrupt climate changes in the paleoclimatic record. The general public is not aware of the change in the fundamental science or what has happened in the past from unequivocal analysis of the paleoclimatic record. It is a fact that the planet has in the past abruptly cooled. That fact deserves respect.

My bold and underline.

I think "disproving" is going too far, but I sure want to see the papers your referring to.

Thanks

[New disaster film coming to a theater near you,

Glacier

Coming to you............

slowly]:cool:

William

2009-Jul-02, 03:50 AM

My bold and underline.

I think "disproving" is going too far, but I sure want to see the papers your referring to.

Thanks

[New disaster film coming to a theater near you,

Glacier

Coming to you............

slowly]:cool:

Wunsch's paper states what has been known for sometime by specialists in paleoclimatolgy. The orbital insolation changes do not explain the glacial/interglacial cycle. Insolation is currently the same at the so called critical latitude 60N, as it was during the coldest part of the last glacial period, yet the interglacial period has not ended.

Milankovitch's hypothesis is that cold summers in the North enable the ice sheets to form. Aphelion is currently in June, Perihelion is in January which is the necessary condition for the massive ice sheets to form, according to Milankovitch's theory.

When you attempt to quantify the hand waving orbital theory it falls apart. There are instances when the ice sheets melt before insolation reaches its peak and instances when the ice sheets form before insolation reaches it minimum in summer. There is no explanation as to why the weakest of the insolation drivers orbital eccentricity could drive the 100 kyr cycle. Nor is there an explanation as to why the cycle changed from 41 kyr to 100 kyr.

It helps to try to imagine Canada and the Northern US States covered with a 2 mile thick ice sheet. New York is one of the ice sheet centers (Due to high amount of moisture available from the Gulf). There are track marks in the rocks in Central Park were the ice sheet dragged stones. It was and is absurd to try to explain that extreme change in climate by appealing to orbital insolation changes. Orbital insolation changes make summer warmer and winter colder or visa versa.

It is obvious that to explain the ice sheet observations, both summer and winter become much colder. Insolation is not the cause.

The mechanism must explain all the observations. Milankovitch's theory was assumed to be correct because it in general matches the cycle in terms of timing and because there was no alternative explanation. People accept what is taught, because it is taught.

See my comments and the linked papers concerning the Gulf Stream myth.

The finding of abrupt climate change was a surprise. The Antarctic due to the polar see-saw warms slightly when there is the abrupt cooling of the planet.

The abrupt cooling was found by analyzing the Greenland Ice Sheet. (The data resolution is finer in for the Greenland Ice Sheet as compared to the Antarctic Ice sheet as there is more yearly snow accumulation on top of the Greenland Ice Sheet.) Specialists did not believe the results from the first Greenland ice sheet core. A second core was drilled which confirmed the results. There is unequivocal evidence of abrupt cyclic cooling and warming in the ice sheet layers.

Orbital insolation changes are gradual. What is observed is a saw tooth pattern that is being driven by a strong forcing function. That the forcing function can cool the planet in both glacial and interglacial periods shows that it is external.

Quantitative estimate of the Milankovitch-forced contribution to observed Quaternary climate change

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/milankovitchqsr2004.pdf

A number of records commonly described as showing control of climate change by Milankovitch insolation forcing are reexamined. The fraction of the record variance attributable to orbital changes never exceeds 20%. In no case, including a tuned core, do these forcing bands explain the overall behavior of the records. At zero order, all records are consistent with stochastic models of varying complexity with a small superimposed Milankovitch response, mainly in the obliquity band. Evidence cited to support the hypothesis that the 100 Ka glacial/interglacial cycles are controlled by the quasi-periodic insolation forcing is likely indistinguishable from chance, given the small sample size and near-integer ratios of 100 Ka to the precessional periods.

The so-called Milankovitch hypothesis, that much of inferred past climate change is a response to near periodic variations in the earth’s position and orientation relative to the sun, has attracted a great deal of attention. Numerous textbooks (e.g., Bradley, 1999; Wilson et al., 2000; Ruddiman, 2001) of varying levels and sophisticate ion all tell the reader that the insolation changes are a major element controlling climate on time scales beyond about 10,000 years.

mugaliens

2009-Jul-02, 06:06 AM

When are you going to back up your claim and show exactly where Pierce et al. are assuming that downwelling IR radiation heats the ocean?

Are you claiming that IR absorbed/reflected by atmospheric H2O is somehow perfectly reflected by the oceans? If not, why do you not allow for the commonly-acknowledged scientific understanding that oceans are warmed by IR energy as reflected by atmospheric H2O, including clouds?
IPCC references, below.

Or are you claiming that IR energy reflected or absorbed/re-radiated by atmospheric CO2 ("downwelled," as you call it), somehow does not heat the ocean?

If not, in either one or both cases, then I respectfully request you not ask misleading questions, and thank you in advance for moving instead towards a more open and objective, as well as a less contentious and more scientific approach to this issue.

Seriously - the time for rhetoric is over. It's time for all of us to throw of the shackles of decade-old rhetoric/diatribe and get on with a clean, unfettered approach to this issue! Too much damage (to your taxpayer dollars, no less) has been done to date. Let's move on. Thanks.

When are you going to show where you got your claimed "over 90%" for the water vapor's part of the greenhouse effect?

It's estimated that water vapor's greenhouse gas effect ranges between 66% and 85% of the effect of global warming, including clouds ("Water vapour: feedback or forcing? (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142)". RealClimate. 6 April 2005. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142 (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142). Retrieved on 2006-05-01). By contrast, CO2 makes up between 9% and 26% of the effect of global warming.

Carbon dioxide has been much ballyhooed, but the concept of global warming potential (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential), which reflects both a chemical's greenhouse gas efficiency as well as its atmospheric lifetime, has remained in the background, despite it's ability to provide an objective framework within which to make objective, rational decisions concerning global warming.

Put simply, GWP is a measure of how much a given mass of greenhouse gas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas) is estimated to contribute to global warming. Thus, these numbers cannot be directly compared with referring to their relative masses in the atmosphere. Even that is simplistic, as some reside in the lower atmosphere, while others reside in the upper atmosphere, or are dispersed in varying concentrations throughout, and their location affects the nature of their contributions to global warming.

They're good for seeing how much different chemicals contribute to global warming, however. For example, CO2 is very weak compared to CFC-12, but CO2's abundance makes its total effect greater than CFC-12.

GWPs for common greenhouse gases (Source: IPCC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change) Fourth Assessment Report, Table 2.14 (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf)) over 100 years (save for CO2 which is the reference and is given for all time periods):

CO2: 1 over all time periods
Methane: 25
Nitrous Oxide: 298
CFC-12: 10,900
HCFC-22: 1,810
Tetraflouromethane: 7,390
Sulfur Hexaflouride: 22,800
Nitrogen Triflouride: 17,200

So how does water vapor fit in? Unfortunately, the IPCC report linked above fails to include it in its effects. Fortunately, it's affects are as well known as being the most significant, by a very, very large margin, as are other greenhouse gases.

What's often not well understood, and is commonly misunderstood, is the effect atmospheric H2O has on both global warming via water vapor feedback ("downfeed," as you put it), and on global cooling via the same effect.

Many climatologists claim that water vapor's effect is feedback only, and not forcing. Many other climatologists, however, have moved beyond this grossly over-simplified approach, as it requires a large discounting of much of what we've learned about greenhouse gases since the mid-1980s.

The idea is that relative humidity remains somewhat constant. As a result, as the Earth warms, specific humidity increases in response to increase in air temps, as watever vapor increases, thus trapping additional IR radiation. But the reverse is also true - as the Earth cools, for whatever reason, with relative humidity remaining fairly constant, specific humidity drops, thus allowing additional IR radiation to escape.

In short, this effect is responsible for approximately 60% increase during warming, and the same decrease during cooling. It's this latter effect which is often ignored, but which was very precisely measured during Mt. Pinatubo's eruption, the volcanic aerosols of which caused a cooling, which was subsequently accentuated by atmospheric H20 by approximately 60%, all of which lasted for about 3 years after the eruption, during which time the water vapor had adjusted in response to the cooler sea surface temperatures.

The reason this doesn't result in runaway global warming (or cooling) is that IR radiative power varies in a greater amount than atmospheric H2O's insulative effect, and the volumes of data gathered throughout the Mt. Pinatubo years corroborated this fact.

PraedSt

2009-Jul-02, 06:15 AM

But this is an interesting chart nevertheless.

Does anyone know what's behind this 4-5yr temperature cycle? I assume it's been covered already in this thread, so apologies in advance. A link to the relevant post would suffice. Thanks.
Can anyone else help with this? The chart in question is this one (http://www.bautforum.com/1520279-post1660.html), but the cycle shows up in surface temp charts as well.

Or to put it another way, longer time scale temp charts tend to have/show/use 5 yr average temps. Anyone know the reason?

Thanks.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-02, 06:53 AM

If the heat doesn't mix down to to the boundary layer, how come there is a boundary layer? The fact is, for the ocean to be rising to the extent indicated by the satellite altimetry, an awful lot more than 50 meters of it has to be expanding. My calculated 1000 meters will not be exact, but it's ball park. Gavin and Pierrehumberts 50 meters is at least an order of magnitude too small.
I showed you observations that clearly show that 50 meters is a good estimate of mixed layer depth. Perhaps you should find out what mixed layer depth means.

By the way, let us not also forget that this mixed layer depth business was just one mistake out of the three presented in the RealClimate article (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/).

And a nicely cherry picked time period it is too.
What? They use that time period to compare their analysis with others, and they give reason why those years were selected. And as I already said, and you could have checked this for yourself if you would have bothered to look at the paper before starting to arguing against it, they don't present the increased OHC value directly, they just show in one of their graphs how much each of the three compared datasets increase per year.

Anyway, scaling off the graph on the NOAA site because their ftp server isn't playing ball, the 1955-1996 rise is somewhere near the figure I gave.
You gave a figure of 6X18^22 J which translates to 2.5 x 10^28 J and is nowhere near the correct value.

Having said that, scaling the 1969-2003 period of the same graph gives around 13x10^22J so who knows what the truth is.
Levitus et al. (2009) give a number of 0.32 J / year for the period of 1969-2003 for their dataset.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-02, 08:08 AM

Are you claiming that IR absorbed/reflected by atmospheric H2O is somehow perfectly reflected by the oceans?
No, just asking Stroller to back up his/her claim that Pierce et al. were only assuming that downwelling IR radiation heats the ocean. It is actually Stroller who has been claiming something like you ask.

If not, why do you not allow for the commonly-acknowledged scientific understanding that oceans are warmed by IR energy as reflected by atmospheric H2O, including clouds?
I don't understand, I haven't made any claims about the issue you ask. I have only presented some papers that show how air temperature affects ocean temperature. I have not claimed anything on direct IR effects.

Or are you claiming that IR energy reflected or absorbed/re-radiated by atmospheric CO2 ("downwelled," as you call it), somehow does not heat the ocean?
No. That is Stroller's claim (I think), and "downwelling" was his/her term for it, I only used the same term in order to help understanding within the dialogue.

If not, in either one or both cases, then I respectfully request you not ask misleading questions,...
I presented Pierce et al. paper as an evidence for anthropogenic warming of the oceans, Stroller claimed that they only assume that downwelling IR radiation heats the ocean, I asked Stroller to show where are they making that assumption because I think that the mechanisms for heat transfer in air-sea interface are built in climate model they are using. What is so misleading about that?

...and thank you in advance for moving instead towards a more open and objective, as well as a less contentious and more scientific approach to this issue.
I have presented scientific papers to back up my sayings all the time. Are you claiming that I haven't been objective? If yes, kindly show evidence for it.

It's estimated that water vapor's greenhouse gas effect ranges between 66% and 85% of the effect of global warming, including clouds ("Water vapour: feedback or forcing?". RealClimate. 6 April 2005. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142. Retrieved on 2006-05-01).
Stroller claimed it was over 90 %, I was asking about that specific value.

By contrast, CO2 makes up between 9% and 26% of the effect of global warming.
No. The RealClimate article you linked to means that the 9 - 26 % is the CO2 percentage of greenhouse effect. Global warming is different thing. Global warming is caused by long term changes in the amount of CO2 greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide has been much ballyhooed, but the concept of global warming potential, which reflects both a chemical's greenhouse gas efficiency as well as its atmospheric lifetime, has remained in the background, despite it's ability to provide an objective framework within which to make objective, rational decisions concerning global warming.
Global warming potential is well known in climate science. Decision making belongs to politics, and I would rather discuss the science.

What's often not well understood, and is commonly misunderstood, is the effect atmospheric H2O has on both global warming via water vapor feedback ("downfeed," as you put it), and on global cooling via the same effect.
Many feedbacks work in both directions, such as albedo. I haven't used "downfeed", I'm quite sure of it.

Many climatologists claim that water vapor's effect is feedback only, and not forcing.
Please show examples.

In short, this effect is responsible for approximately 60% increase during warming, and the same decrease during cooling. It's this latter effect which is often ignored,...
Ignored by who? Climate scientist are certainly aware of it.

jlhredshift

2009-Jul-02, 11:30 AM

Wunsch's paper states what has been known for sometime by specialists in paleoclimatolgy. The orbital insolation changes do not explain the glacial/interglacial cycle. Insolation is currently the same at the so called critical latitude 60N, as it was during the coldest part of the last glacial period, yet the interglacial period has not ended.

Milankovitch's hypothesis is that cold summers in the North enable the ice sheets to form. Aphelion is currently in June, Perihelion is in January which is the necessary condition for the massive ice sheets to form, according to Milankovitch's theory.

When you attempt to quantify the hand waving orbital theory it falls apart. There are instances when the ice sheets melt before insolation reaches its peak and instances when the ice sheets form before insolation reaches it minimum in summer. There is no explanation as to why the weakest of the insolation drivers orbital eccentricity could drive the 100 kyr cycle. Nor is there an explanation as to why the cycle changed from 41 kyr to 100 kyr.

It helps to try to imagine Canada and the Northern US States covered with a 2 mile thick ice sheet. New York is one of the ice sheet centers (Due to high amount of moisture available from the Gulf). There are track marks in the rocks in Central Park were the ice sheet dragged stones. It was and is absurd to try to explain that extreme change in climate by appealing to orbital insolation changes. Orbital insolation changes make summer warmer and winter colder or visa versa.

It is obvious that to explain the ice sheet observations, both summer and winter become much colder. Insolation is not the cause.

The mechanism must explain all the observations. Milankovitch's theory was assumed to be correct because it in general matches the cycle in terms of timing and because there was no alternative explanation. People accept what is taught, because it is taught.

See my comments and the linked papers concerning the Gulf Stream myth.

The finding of abrupt climate change was a surprise. The Antarctic due to the polar see-saw warms slightly when there is the abrupt cooling of the planet.

The abrupt cooling was found by analyzing the Greenland Ice Sheet. (The data resolution is finer in for the Greenland Ice Sheet as compared to the Antarctic Ice sheet as there is more yearly snow accumulation on top of the Greenland Ice Sheet.) Specialists did not believe the results from the first Greenland ice sheet core. A second core was drilled which confirmed the results. There is unequivocal evidence of abrupt cyclic cooling and warming in the ice sheet layers.

Orbital insolation changes are gradual. What is observed is a saw tooth pattern that is being driven by a strong forcing function. That the forcing function can cool the planet in both glacial and interglacial periods shows that it is external.

Quantitative estimate of the Milankovitch-forced contribution to observed Quaternary climate change

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/milankovitchqsr2004.pdf

Thanks for the link.

I have posted two papers on post # 603 (http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/80891-geology-discussion-21.html#post1520989) in the Geology thread that back up your excellent summary. I still would like to suggest caution in using the term "disproving" as too strong and though I am in majority agreeing with you, I am sure that we have much to learn still, as we progress in our understanding of past events.

G O R T

2009-Jul-02, 11:50 AM

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/du-cwo051309.php

Concerning the first part: Arguing semantics is pointless. The link does not debate that thermohaline circulation exists, only that it seems to not be where it was theorised. Whether you consider a flow that is not specifically laminar a "conveyor" or not does not matter, it still flows.

http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/geog41066/7-Overpeck.pdf

Concerning the second part: This has nothing to do with the subject of the existance of thermohaline circulation.

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/Gulf.pdf

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate

Concerning the third part: I have seen Richard Seager's work before. He does not debate the existence of the thermohaline circulation, only its effect. Furthermore his work makes incorrect use of known data. The Gulf Stream loses heat to the atmosphere during its entire journey northeast, yet he attributes atmospheric heat data only to the atmosphere as if this were over a landmass. Clearly a good portion of the measured atmospheric heat is coming from the ocean surface. The heat content of some 30 sverdrups of water flow is never calculated or accounted for. A rework is definately in order.

I hope that the case you are building is not based on too many of these misunderstandings.
I am skeptical of parts of the mainstream conjecture, but will not be swayed by baseless misdirections.

G O R T

2009-Jul-02, 01:03 PM

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/milankovitchqsr2004.pdf

Oh great! Another study of one effect in isolation!

I would have thought it would be pretty obvious from the fact that the ice age actually started at all that other factors are at work here. An analysis of Milankovitch forcings alone as cause of glacial cycles is therefore somewhat pointless.

Abrupt cycles of warming and cooling cannot simply be assumed to be from external forcing. Further, even if said external forcing is accepted it does not explain the shift in glacial cycle timing, does it?

For quite some time the longitudinal placement of the continents and their control of oceanic and atmospheric circulation has been deemed important. As the Atlantic slowly widens its access to the Arctic, is not something bound to change in the Earth's internal feedback mechanisims?

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-02, 01:46 PM

The mechanism must explain all the observations. Milankovitch's theory was assumed to be correct because it in general matches the cycle in terms of timing and because there was no alternative explanation. People accept what is taught, because it is taught.
According to current understanding, historical climate changes are not due to Milankovich cycles alone. Milankovich cycles can act as initiators of the changes, but greenhouse gases acting as a positive feedback is thought to be the main cause for the amplitude of the changes. One of the latest papers dealing with this is Hansen et al. (2008) (http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf). This has been told to William many times here, but for some reason he keeps coming back every once in a while with exactly the same argument.

Ivan Viehoff

2009-Jul-02, 02:07 PM

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate
The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth

Yes we discussed that one before. And we agreed that the Gulf Stream does keep Europe warmer than it would be without it. And that article does not say otherwise.

In interpreting that quote, we need to be careful as to what is the myth that is disproved, and what elements of warmth one considers anamalous. Is it "anomalous", for example, that places with ocean to the west and continent to the east are in general a lot warmer than when they are the other way around? The "myth" this article disproves is that the Gulf Stream is the only cause, or the major cause, of keeping Europe warmer than other locations at the same latitude. There are other more significant factors, including the one I just mentioned, and, curiously, the location of mountains in North America, because of their effect in directing certain winds.

However it remains the case that the Gulf Stream keeps Europe warmer than it otherwise would be without it, by rather more than the amount of the last 30 years climate warming in many places. Losing it would be especially significant for places like Norway and Scotland. Turning off the Gulf Stream is not going to give Europe the climate of Pacific Siberia or Atlantic Canada/New England. But it would make it cooler.

Tinaa

2009-Jul-02, 03:22 PM

Sorry to change the subject here but i just read an article stating that humans out 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes. http://www.ciw.edu/news/plants_put_limit_ice_ages

Doesn't sound right to me.

PraedSt

2009-Jul-02, 03:57 PM

Sorry to change the subject here but i just read an article stating that humans out 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes. http://www.ciw.edu/news/plants_put_limit_ice_ages

Doesn't sound right to me.
You mean this sentence from the last para? "We are releasing CO2 to the atmosphere about 100 times faster than all the volcanoes in the world put together"?

From a quick wiki search this seems correct. May even be on the low side. Estimates: volcanoes ~ 200MT/yr, fossil fuel burning ~ 30,000MT/yr.

lomiller1

2009-Jul-02, 05:50 PM

According to current understanding, historical climate changes are not due to Milankovich cycles alone. Milankovich cycles can act as initiators of the changes, but greenhouse gases acting as a positive feedback is thought to be the main cause for the amplitude of the changes.

Aye. The wunch paper argues that there isn’t a liner relationship between Milankovich cycles and glaciation cycles. If, as Hansen suggests, there are “tipping points” in the earths climate, one wouldn’t expect a linear relationship since tipping points are essentuialy non-linearity raising it's head.

lomiller1

2009-Jul-02, 05:54 PM

Sorry to change the subject here but i just read an article stating that humans out 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes. http://www.ciw.edu/news/plants_put_limit_ice_ages

Doesn't sound right to me.

Yes, human CO2 emissions are 100+ times what volcanoes emit in an average year. If this seems odd, remember that over the very long term Volcanic CO2 is balanced by the formation of Carbonate rock, which isn’t exactly a speedy process.

William

2009-Jul-03, 03:01 AM

Concerning the first part: Arguing semantics is pointless. The link does not debate that thermohaline circulation exists, only that it seems to not be where it was theorised. Whether you consider a flow that is not specifically laminar a "conveyor" or not does not matter, it still flows.

Concerning the second part: This has nothing to do with the subject of the existance of thermohaline circulation.

Concerning the third part: I have seen Richard Seager's work before. He does not debate the existence of the thermohaline circulation, only its effect. Furthermore his work makes incorrect use of known data. The Gulf Stream loses heat to the atmosphere during its entire journey northeast, yet he attributes atmospheric heat data only to the atmosphere as if this were over a landmass. Clearly a good portion of the measured atmospheric heat is coming from the ocean surface. The heat content of some 30 sverdrups of water flow is never calculated or accounted for. A rework is definately in order.

I hope that the case you are building is not based on too many of these misunderstandings.
I am skeptical of parts of the mainstream conjecture, but will not be swayed by baseless misdirections.

It is a fact that in the past there has been a series of cyclic abrupt climate changes. If is a fact that there are cosmogenic isotopes changes showing a massive change in the solar magnetic cycle and/or a massive change to the geomagnetic field conncurrently with the abrupt climate changes. (Both of these changes will cause a large change in the cosmogenic isotopes.) If this were an investigation of a serial murder there would be the same suspect at each crime, however, the investigators have selected a small girl as a suspect who is not at the crime scene for some of the murders and is physically not capable of the modus operandus. The investigators plead however that the small girl can cause massive changes as the system is unstable (at tripping point) such that a butterfly change can cause a massive climatic change which causes a 2 mile thick sheet of ice to cover Canada, Northern Europe, and the Northern US states for 100,000 years, again and again. Then the small girl can every 100,000 years cause the ice to melt for the short interglacial period which is roughly 15,000 years long.

No one has quantified the small girl theory, because insolation changes cannot have caused the glacial/interglacial cycle. The Southern Hemisphere was founded to have cooled when it should have warmed according to the insolation theory. Something external is causing the entire planet to cool.

Please Lomiller or anyone else in this forum. Explain what causes the glacial/interglacial cycle and the abrupt climate cooling events in the climatic record.

The cyclic abrupt climate changes and the glacial/interglacial cycle requires a physical explanation, a cause. The explanation provide in paleoclimatic textbooks (which I have copies of and have read) and that is published in the internet is Wally Broeker's conveyor theory. Some event cyclically interrupts the North Atlantic Drift current and the interruption of the North Atlantic drift current causes the planet to abruptly cool. That is an internal mechanism.

The problem is the amount of heat transferred by the North Atlantic Drift current is an order of magnitude to small to explain the observations. And in addition the tropics and Southern Hemisphere during the abrupt Northern Hemisphere cooling events. If the North Atlantic drift current stops the tropics will warm not cool and the stoppage of the North Atlantic drift current as there is no conveyor cannot affect the Southern Hemisphere.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/du-cwo051309.php

The Duke study shows the thermalhaline movement is not a conveyor. It therefore cannot cause the polar see-saw nor can it have caused the abrupt cooling events in paleoclimatic record based on basic calculation of the amount of heat the is transferred. The thermalhaline conveyor does not exist.

""Everybody always thought this deep flow operated like a conveyor belt, but what we are saying is that concept doesn't hold anymore,"said Duke oceanographer Susan Lozier. "So it's going to be more difficult to measure these climate change signals in the deep ocean."[/QUOTE]

Seager et al. modeled the North Atlantic drift current and used a climate modeling model that shows the amount of heat released by the Atlantic drift current warms Europe by about 2C in the winter and slightly cools Europe in the summer. An abrupt stoppage of the North Atlantic drift current therefore cannot physically have caused the Younger Dryas and other abrupt cooling events in the Paleoclimatic record.

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate

]But from what specialists have long known, I would expect that any slowdown in thermohaline circulation would have a noticeable but not catastrophic effect on climate. The temperature difference between Europe and Labrador should remain. Temperatures will not drop to ice-age levels, not even to the levels of the Little Ice Age, the relatively cold period that Europe suffered a few centuries ago. The North Atlantic will not freeze over, and English Channel ferries will not have to plow their way through sea ice. A slowdown in thermohaline circulation should bring on a cooling tendency of at most a few degrees across the North Atlantic—one that would most likely be overwhelmed by the warming caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. This moderating influence is indeed what the climate models show for the 21st century and what has been stated in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

William

2009-Jul-03, 05:17 AM

Think of the massive ice sheets covering Canada, Northern US States, and Northern States. 2 miles thick. Think of the current climate in those regions. How is that possible? Anyone in the forum? That climate change has happened 22 times in the past. This is not an abstract theoretical problem.

There is obviously a major climate forcing function that abruptly changes the planet. The resultant is abrupt and long term cooling of the planet. There is a serial cause to what has and will happen.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100348&org=ATM

Glacial Records Depict Ice Age Climate in Synch Worldwide

Arlington, VA—An answer to the long-standing riddle of whether the Earth's ice ages occurred simultaneously in the Southern and Northern hemispheres is emerging from glacial deposits found in the high desert east of the Andes.

"The results are significant because they indicate that the whole Earth experiences major ice-age cold periods at the same time, and thus, some climate-forcing mechanism must homogenize the Earth's climate system during ice ages and, by inference, other periods," says Michael Kaplan, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh who conducted the work at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison.

The results address a major debate in the scientific community, according to Singer and Kaplan, because they seem to undermine a widely held idea that global redistribution of heat through the oceans is the primary mechanism that drove major climate shifts of the past.

The implications of the new work, say the study authors, support a different hypothesis: Rapid cooling of the Earth's atmosphere synchronized climate change around the globe during each of the last two glacial epochs.

"Because the Earth is oriented in space in such a way that the hemispheres are out of phase in the amount of solar radiation they receive, it is surprising to find that the climate in the Southern Hemisphere cooled off repeatedly during a period when it received its largest dose of solar radiation," says Singer. "Moreover, this rapid synchronization of atmospheric temperature between the polar hemispheres appears to have occurred during both of the last major ice ages that gripped the Earth."

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-03, 06:39 AM

Here's a fairly recent review article: "Orbital changes and climate" - Ruddiman (2006) (http://www.falw.vu/~peef/teaching/orbital_forcing/assets/Ruddiman_2006_QSR.pdf)

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-03, 07:03 AM

Here's a paper that directly addresses Wunsch's work (with considerably different result - Milankovich cycles are indeed important in past climate changes): "Resolving Milankovitch: Consideration of signal and noise" - Meyers et al. (2008) (http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~mp364/data/2008%20Meyers.pdf).

William

2009-Jul-03, 02:12 PM

Gillianren

2009-Jul-03, 04:50 PM

William

2009-Jul-03, 09:36 PM

Hey, William, three things.

One. Do you think enlarging the font convinces more people? Or is it that you don't think people read your posts carefully enough and that this will make them do so?

Two. You have not yet, in your own words, using just words, explained the difference between climate and weather. Would you please do so?

Three. What would convince you of AGW?

Hello Gillianren,

Weather is the seasonal and regional variance that occurs on the planet. Weather occurs for reasons. (i.e. Weather is caused by mechanisms on the planet and the orbital changes.) It is not random, a mystery. Climate change is large scale long term changes to planetary temperature. Climate change also happens for reasons. It is also is not random.

Is not a picture worth a thousand words? (I do not understand why you are telling me not to link to graphs. I do not understand why we are not concerned about the cooling type of climate change. I look at this graph and try to image the country were I live covered with a 2 mile thick ice sheet.) This graph shows a planet that has become unstable. The area of the planet that is covered with ice sheets increases from the current 18% to 30%, during the glacial phase. To me that graph shows climate change. Does anyone in the forum disagree with that viewpoint.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

2) What would convince me of AWG?

I am not sure because the data and papers I have read indicate the CO2 mechanism saturates. I provided papers above that show the planet was cold for millions years when CO2 levels were high and hot when CO2 levels were low. This current glacial epoch is the only instance when CO2 levels were low and there was a period during this epoch when there was an ice sheet on Antarctic and CO2 levels were high.

The data seems to indicate that the planet provides negative rather than positive feedback to temperature increases. If you look at the above graph, when the planet was warmer the orbital changes did not create a glacial/interglacial cycle. Planetary temperature was stable.

My concern is different than warmers or the spectics. I look at the data and logic of the theories. Who said what is less important as the data and logic. I do not pick sides.

The planet has abruptly cooled in the past. There were concurrent solar changes when the abrupt cooling events occurred. As the sun is currently in an unusual state I am interested if there will be any observed planetary changes.

The data shows the planet is cooling, however, the change is small and may be due to some other mechanism.

If the planet starts to abruptly cool then I would suppect something is incorrect with the AWG hypothesis. If the planet starts to warm again, then I would believe there is something incorrect with Svensmark, Shiva, Tinsley, and so on's hypothesis.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/uah_jun09.png

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/uah_jun09.png

Gillianren

2009-Jul-03, 11:21 PM

William

2009-Jul-04, 04:10 AM

Agh.

The reason I didn't ask for graphs is that I am looking for a definition. Specifically in words. A statement, not a comparison of whatever it is you're talking about in your graphs. And, frankly, no, a picture is not always worth a thousand words, and even if it were, you don't always need that many. Sometimes, one will do nicely.

I'll also note that you didn't really answer the third question--you went off on a tangent about how you interpret the data instead--and didn't answer the first at all. I assure you it was not rhetorical.

Hi Gillianren,

When there is more data we can discuss the theoretical implications of the data. If my scientific viewpoint is incorrect, I will publically state that I was incorrect.

The planet has in the past (See my last comment) cyclically abruptly cooled. The past interglacial periods have been short. I have and have read papers that show in the past the planet abruptly cooled when there was an abrupt change in cosmogenic isotopes. The sun is currently exhibiting unusual behaviour which was not predicted and that is anomalous compared to past cycles.

I believe these statements are uncontested facts.

It is not clear at this point in time, however, whether the solar cycle has been interrupted or whether it will instead continue at a reduced level. It also is not clear what the affect of the solar cycle interruption will be on the planet.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-04, 06:14 AM

I am not sure because the data and papers I have read indicate the CO2 mechanism saturates.
Not true. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/) I would be surprised if you could point to a peer reviewed paper claiming this that has been published within the last 50 years. I have seen a calculation presented, as I have mentioned before, where the calculated saturation applied only to the nominal absorption frequency of CO2, completely ignoring that molecular collisions spread the CO2 absorption bands considerably (and when I mentioned this, the AGW doubter who presented the calculation hadn't even ever heard of collision induced absorption).

If you look at the above graph, when the planet was warmer the orbital changes did not create a glacial/interglacial cycle. Planetary temperature was stable.
See my answers below. Short answer is that when CO2 concentration is high enough, it overwhelmes other forcings and dominates the climate, so there's much less variation in global temperature due to other forcings.

I provided papers above that show the planet was cold for millions years when CO2 levels were high and hot when CO2 levels were low.
I must have missed them, what were those again?

Hansen et al. (2008) (http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf) show that CO2 (+ CH4) and temperature have correlated very well for the past 65 million years.

"Carbon dioxide and climate over the past 300Myr" - Retallack (2002) (http://homologa.ambiente.sp.gov.br/proclima/artigos_dissertacoes/artigos_ingles/carbondioxideandclimateoverthepast300myr.pdf) says that CO2 and temperature have followed each other quite well for the past 300 million years:

For at least the past 300 Myr, there is a remarkably high temporal correlation between peaks of atmospheric CO2, revealed by study of stomatal indices of fossil leaves of Ginkgo, Lepidopteris, Tatarina and Rhachiphyllum, and palaeotemperature maxima, revealed by oxygen isotopic (δ18O) composition of marine biogenic carbonate.

Retallack also mentions possible reason for some studies showing differing trends in CO2 and temperature:

In contrast, CO2–temperature uncoupling has been proposed from geological time-series of carbon isotopic composition of palaeosols and of marine phytoplankton compared with foraminifera, which fail to indicate high CO2 at known times of high palaeotemperature. Failure of carbon isotopic palaeobarometers may be due to episodic release of CH4, which has an unusually light isotopic value (down to −110 [promilles], and typically −60 [promilles] δ13C) and which oxidizes rapidly (within 7–24 yr) to isotopically light CO2.

"CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic" - Royer (2006) (https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/droyer/web/PhanCO2(GCA).pdf) says about CO2 and temperature for last 542 million years:

A pervasive, tight correlation between CO2 and temperature is found both at coarse (10 my timescales) and fine resolutions up to the temporal limits of the data set (million-year timescales), indicating that CO2, operating in combination with many other factors such as solar luminosity and paleogeography, has imparted strong control over global temperatures for much of the Phanerozoic.

Furthermore, she offers an explanation for why the planet has become "unstable" during the last couple of millions of years ago:

A CO2 threshold of below ~500 ppm is suggested for the initiation of widespread, continental glaciations, although this threshold was likely higher during the Paleozoic due to a lower solar luminosity at that time. Also, based on data from the Jurassic and Cretaceous, a CO2 threshold of below ~1000 ppm is proposed for the initiation of cool non-glacial conditions.
As you can see from Hansen et al., the CO2 levels were dropping for the last millions of years providing an explanation of why the glacial-interglacial cycles could begin working.

William

2009-Jul-04, 02:50 PM

Not true. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/) I would be surprised if you could point to a peer reviewed paper claiming this that has been published within the last 50 years. I have seen a calculation presented, as I have mentioned before, where the calculated saturation applied only to the nominal absorption frequency of CO2, completely ignoring that molecular collisions spread the CO2 absorption bands considerably (and when I mentioned this, the AGW doubter who presented the calculation hadn't even ever heard of collision induced absorption).

See my answers below. Short answer is that when CO2 concentration is high enough, it overwhelmes other forcings and dominates the climate, so there's much less variation in global temperature due to other forcings.

I must have missed them, what were those again?

Hansen et al. (2008) (http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf) show that CO2 (+ CH4) and temperature have correlated very well for the past 65 million years.

"Carbon dioxide and climate over the past 300Myr" - Retallack (2002) (http://homologa.ambiente.sp.gov.br/proclima/artigos_dissertacoes/artigos_ingles/carbondioxideandclimateoverthepast300myr.pdf) says that CO2 and temperature have followed each other quite well for the past 300 million years:

Retallack also mentions possible reason for some studies showing differing trends in CO2 and temperature:

"CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic" - Royer (2006) (https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/droyer/web/PhanCO2(GCA).pdf) says about CO2 and temperature for last 542 million years:

Furthermore, she offers an explanation for why the planet has become "unstable" during the last couple of millions of years ago:

As you can see from Hansen et al., the CO2 levels were dropping for the last millions of years providing an explanation of why the glacial-interglacial cycles could begin working.

Ari,
The lack of correlation of planetary temperature with CO2 levels has been known for sometime. See the next paper below which is only one of a group that note a lack of correlation with the past ice epoches and CO2 levels. Shiva's paper is also interesting.

Hansen's paper does not discuss the 425 millions years when there was not correlation of planetary temperature with CO2 levels. Hansen's paper discusses the last 65 million years when there is some correlation. Even in the last 65 million years there are multiple periods when there is not correlation. Hansen ignores the period in the last 25 million years when CO2 levels were high and there was an Ice Sheet in Antarctic. (i.e. CO2 mostly correlates with planetary temperature in the last 65 million years. For the last 500 million years planetary temperature does not correlate with planetary temperature.)

We do not however need to look at 500 million years of data to determine there is something fundamentally incorrect with the CO2 hypothesis.

The upper atmosphere is not cooling as predicted by the models and the planet has not increased in temperature as predicted by the models (The warming is logrithmically related to CO2 levels so the first increase in CO2 has the greatest affect on planetary temperature. (i.e. CO2 levels have increased 30%, the planetary temperature anomaly is roughly currently zero. Hansen's argument in the paper which you provided a link to is that the warming is in the pipe. The warming is alleged to be hidden somewhere in the system and is about to appear.), it appears something is fundamentally incorrect with the CO2 warming hypothesis. (i.e. The observations in detailed they do not match what is predicted by the CO2 models.)

As I said this can be explained (Lack of correlation of CO2 levels and planetary temperature and upper stratosphere not cooling as predicted by the models. The most recent upper stratospheric temperature data (for data up to the spring of this year), analyzed using the warming camp's methodology disputes the CO2 hypothesis.) by the CO2 mechanism saturating in the upper atmosphere. All agree CO2 has staturated in the lower atmosphere. The Realclimate site notes additional CO2 will cause additional warming higher in the atmosphere. When I say "saturate" I am speaking about CO2 as part of a system. To understand what will happen as CO2 levels increase, the modelling must take into account all atoms and ions in the upper atmosphere and how they interract and emit. There is a significant delay from when the CO2 molecule absorbs a photon and when it re-emits. During that time period the CO2 molecules transfers its kinetic energy to other molecules and ions in the atmosphere. As there are more ions higher in the atmosphere and ions unlike atoms can emit the infrared energy, the infrared photon is smeared (i.e. The energy is not frozen at the CO2 absorption and emission frequency). It is likely the smearing that is not taken into account that is the reason why observations do not match models.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years by Daniel H. Rothman

http://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4167.full.pdf+html

The last 500 million years of the strontium-isotope record are shown to correlate significantly with the concurrent record of isotopic fractionation between inorganic and organic carbon after the effects of recycled sediment are removed from the strontium signal. The correlation is shown to result from the common dependence of both signals on weathering and magmatic processes. Because the long-term evolution of carbon dioxide levels depends similarly on weathering and magmatism, the relative fluctuations of CO2 levels are inferred from the shared fluctuations of the isotopic records. The resulting CO2 signal exhibits no systematic correspondence with the geologic record of climatic variations at tectonic time scales....

...The most recent cool period corresponds to relatively low CO2 levels, as is widely expected (30). However, no correspondence between pCO2 and climate is evident in the remainder of the record, in part because the apparent 100 My cycle of the pCO2 record does not match the longer climatic cycle. The lack of correlation remains if one calculates the change in average global surface temperature resulting from changes in pCO2 and the solar constant using energy-balance arguments (7, 26). Superficially, this observation would seem to imply that pCO2 does not exert dominant control on Earth’s climate at time scales greater than about 10 My. A wealth of evidence, however, suggests that pCO2 exerts at least some control [see Crowley and Berner (30) for a recent review]. Fig. 4 cannot by itself refute this assumption. Instead, it simply shows that the ‘‘null hypothesis’’ that pCO2 and climate are unrelated cannot be rejected on the basis of this evidence alone.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-04, 07:45 PM

...and upper stratosphere not cooling as predicted by the models. The most recent upper stratospheric temperature data (for data up to the spring of this year), analyzed using the warming camp's methodology disputes the CO2 hypothesis.
"An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends" - Randel et al. (2009) (http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/2008JD010421.pdf):

The results show mean cooling of 0.5–1.5 K/decade during 1979–2005, with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40–50 km.

I'll deal with the rest of your "arguments" later...

William

2009-Jul-04, 09:38 PM

"An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends" - Randel et al. (2009) (http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/2008JD010421.pdf):

I'll deal with the rest of your "arguments" later...

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4991

Ari,
I am curious why a paper published in 2009 asserts there was a cooling trend of the upper stratoshere from 1998 to 2005. The data subsequent to 2005 shows a warming trend of the upper stratosphere and the net average for the entire period is close to zero which makes sense if the upper level of the atmosphere is saturated from the perspective of CO2.

Calculating an average temperature based on satellite measurements for the upper troposphere is not rocket science and should be absolutely repeatable. (i.e. One can provide the data and aligorithms used to process the data so a third party can check the results. That seems reasonable due to the controversy. The authors of the CO2 supporting papers have todate resisted supply the data and algorithms). Cherry picking the data by ignoring subsequent data that was available that disproves the hypothesis is a different problem.

I am curious what your comment will be to the fact that it appears global warming is over.

Please do not go away, if the cooling trend continues. As I said, I look at this issue as a scientific problem, as opposed to a debate. There seems to be sufficient data and analysis to determine what has happened in the past and more importantly why. We need only wait to watch the change unfold to see which hypothesis is correct, or if a third hypothesis is the answer.

A debate exists over whether tropical troposphere temperature trends in climate models are inconsistent with observations (Karl et al. 2006, IPCC (2007), Douglass et al 2007, Santer et al 2008). Most recently, Santer et al (2008, herein S08) asserted that the Douglass et al statistical methodology was flawed and that a correct methodology showed there is no statistically significant difference between the model ensemble mean trend and either RSS or UAH satellite observations. However this result was based on data ending in 1999. Using data up to the end of 2007 (as available to S08) or to the end of 2008 and applying exactly the same methodology as S08 results in a statistically significant difference between the ensemble mean trend and UAH observations and approaching statistical significance for the RSS T2 data. The claim by S08 to have achieved a “partial resolution” of the discrepancy between observations and the model ensemble mean trend is unwarranted.

William

2009-Jul-04, 09:49 PM

The Late Cenozoic uplift – climate change paradox by William Hay , Emanuel Soeding, Robert DeConto, and Christopher N. Wold

As I said, the lack of correlation of planetary temperature and CO2 levels is not a new topic. A lack of correlation would support the assertion that the atmosphere as a system becomes saturated with higher levels of CO2, such that increased CO2 does not have a signficant effect on planetary temperature.

Also as CO2 levels were relative low and there was not an ice epoch, that indicates that clouds work to moderate climate forcing to keep the planet at a constant temperature.

http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/deconto/hayetal.pdf

Because the GEOCARB model (Berner 1994; Berner and Kothavala 2001) does not have adequate temporal resolution to predict the structure of the Cenozoic decline in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, many geologists tacitly assumed that atmospheric CO2 decreased in parallel with the δ18O curve for deep-sea benthic Foraminifera. Although isotopic data from Mesozoic pedogenic carbonates suggest much higher levels of atmospheric CO2, the younger record is ambiguous (Ekart et al. 1999). Cenozoic paleosols suggest both higher (900–1,000 ppmv) and lower (270–210 ppmv) atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This view of a general decline in atmospheric CO2 throughout the Cenozoic has been challenged by recent studies. Pagani et al. (1999a, 1999b) estimated Miocene atmospheric CO2 concentrations from gp (magnitude of the carbon isotope discrimination during photosynthesis) values based on δ13C in diunsaturated alkenones and the shells of shallow-dwelling planktonic Foraminifera from DSDP and ODP sites in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. They concluded that atmospheric pCO2 levels were below 280 ppmv during most of the Miocene. They also found no feature comparable to the sharp Middle Miocene increase in δ18O interpreted as a major cooling step in the Antarctic. Similar results have been reported for the earlier Cenozoic by Pearson and Palmer (1999, 2000a, 2000b), based on interpretations of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from estimates of oceanic pH using δ11B of foraminiferal calcite....

On the basis of leaf stomatal indices in Ginko and Metasequoia, Royer et al. (2001) have concluded that atmospheric CO2 levels were between 300 and 450 ppmv during the Paleocene, Eocene and Middle Miocene, except for a brief excursion near the Paleocene– Eocene boundary. Veizer et al. (2000) found no direct relationship between the Phanerozoic δ18O record and the occurrence of glacial episodes documented by geological data, suggesting that the two phenomena are not coupled. Kump (2000) noted that this calls into question the currently accepted relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and climate.

William

2009-Jul-05, 05:19 AM

Ari, I have been reading and thinking about Hansen's paper.

This is an excerpt from Hansen et al's paper.

If the upper atmosphere was not as a system saturated, then the additional CO2 that has entered the atmosphere todate (using 280 ppm as a starting point) would using the author's model and assumptions have resulted in a 2C increase in planetary temperature. (The CO2 effect is logrithmitic, so the CO2 warming is greatest for the first initial CO2 injection.)

The assumption for this paper is the temperature change during the glacial/interglacial period was due to GHG changes. However, as noted there are periods of 10's of million years of years when C02 levels were high when the planet was in an ice epoch (We are currently in the fourth ice epoch) and when CO2 was relatively low when the planet was warm. That finding indicates that the planet as a system saturates to CO2.

The planet has not warmed 2C. The planet since 2000 was cooled slightly. Has anyone heard of an explanation for the cooling?

One explanation for the difference from predicted to actual is the planet has negative rather than positive feedback, to a change in forcing.

As noted there are cyclic massive abrupt climate changes (2C to 4C in less than a decade) that currenty do not have a cause in the paleoclimatic record.

http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf

2.4. Warming “in the Pipeline”
The expanded time scale for the industrial era (Fig. 2) reveals a growing gap between actual global temperature (purple curve) and equilibrium (long-term) temperature response based on the net estimated climate forcing (black curve). Ocean and ice sheet response times together account for this gap, which is now 2.0°C. The forcing in Fig. (2) (black curve, Fe scale), when used to drive a global climate model [5], yields global temperature change that agrees closely (Fig. 3 in [5]) with observations (purple curve, Fig. 2).

That climate model, which includes only fast feedbacks, has additional warming of ~0.6°C in the pipeline today because of ocean thermal inertia [5, 8]. The remaining gap between equilibrium temperature for current atmospheric composition and actual global temperature is ~1.4°C. This further 1.4°C warming still to come is due to the slow surface albedo feedback, specifically ice sheet disintegration and vegetation change.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-05, 05:28 AM

The lack of correlation of planetary temperature with CO2 levels has been known for sometime. See the next paper below which is only one of a group that note a lack of correlation with the past ice epoches and CO2 levels.
("The next paper" being Rothman, 2002). "CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate" - Royer et al. (2004) (http://www.juniata.edu/projects/oceans/Misc_Images/GL111/CO2asdriverofclimate.pdf) says:

The paleo-CO2 results of Rothman (2002) and U. Berner and Streif (2001), presented by Shaviv and Veizer (2003) as additional models, are in fact not based on carbon cycle modeling, but constitute an extension of the δ13C plankton CO2 proxy (see below). These authors apply Δ13C, the difference between the δ13C of bulk organic matter and carbonates (Hayes et al., 1999), to directly calculate paleo-CO2. However, bulk organic matter can include non-photosynthetic compounds as well as terrestrial material derived from rivers, and the original method was based strictly on marine photosynthetic compounds (Freeman and Hayes, 1992; cf. Royer et al., 2001a). In addition, changes in Δ13C over time can be due to changes in seawater temperature (Rau et al., 1989) or O2 concentrations (Beerling et al., 2002), and not only atmospheric CO2.

So, as you see, it is most likely that Rothman (2002) data is not very good proxy for athmospheric CO2. Note also the Retallack quote I gave above, and remember that these studies you are quoting only compare CO2 proxies to temperature, while Hansen et al. make more thorough analysis with greenhouse gases and feedbacks.

Hansen's paper discusses the last 65 million years when there is some correlation. Even in the last 65 million years there are multiple periods when there is not correlation. Hansen ignores the period in the last 25 million years when CO2 levels were high and there was an Ice Sheet in Antarctic.
Last time (or was it time before that) when I showed Hansen et al. paper to you, you started to make claims about it, but it turned out that you hadn't even read the paper. You are doing it again. This is what Hansen et al. (2008) (http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf) say about Antarctic glaciation:

Thus atmospheric CO2 declined following the Indo-Asian collision [44] and climate cooled (Fig. 3b) leading to Antarctic glaciation by ~34 My. Antarctica has been more or less glaciated ever since.
How about studying the issues a little before making claims about them and especially before accusing people about ignoring things?

I invite you to look at Hansen et al. Figures 3 and 4, to compare them, and point out the places where there is the huge discrepancy between their derived total forcing in Fig. 4 (mainly determined by greenhouse gas forcing) and the temperature in Fig. 3. I see very good match there.

(i.e. CO2 mostly correlates with planetary temperature in the last 65 million years. For the last 500 million years planetary temperature does not correlate with planetary temperature.)
I already showed you Royer (2006) above talking about tight correlation between CO2 and temperature during last 542 million years. Above mentioned Royer et al. (2004) showed that too.

The upper atmosphere is not cooling as predicted by the models and the planet has not increased in temperature as predicted by the models (The warming is logrithmically related to CO2 levels so the first increase in CO2 has the greatest affect on planetary temperature. (i.e. CO2 levels have increased 30%, the planetary temperature anomaly is roughly currently zero. Hansen's argument in the paper which you provided a link to is that the warming is in the pipe. The warming is alleged to be hidden somewhere in the system and is about to appear.), it appears something is fundamentally incorrect with the CO2 warming hypothesis. (i.e. The observations in detailed they do not match what is predicted by the CO2 models.)
Observation do indeed show that CO2 has an expected effect. I have shown these observations many times in this thread and others, so once again, here's my latest post on the issue (http://www.bautforum.com/1514761-post19.html). Pay particular attention to the Chedin et al. (2002) (http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/itwg/itsc/itsc13/proceedings/session5/5_8_chedin.pdf) who measure the increasing greenhouse effect of CO2 directly from the atmosphere, and that, by the way, is only one of a group of papers doing the same. Currently it has become a routine to measure the atmospheric CO2 concentration from the atmosphere based on its greenhouse effect. That you can't do if CO2 is not having an effect.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-05, 09:32 AM

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4991

Ari,
I am curious why a paper published in 2009 asserts there was a cooling trend of the upper stratoshere from 1998 to 2005. The data subsequent to 2005 shows a warming trend of the upper stratosphere and the net average for the entire period is close to zero which makes sense if the upper level of the atmosphere is saturated from the perspective of CO2.
I think you should check what the terms "stratosphere" and "troposphere" mean. Then you should check what the theory of AGW expects for each of them (cooling in other and warming in other). You have mixed these terms with each other.

And that tropical troposphere stuff which you linked to we have gone through already, I haven't seen anything new happening there recently so I don't see the point in repeating all that once again. But if you insist, I will dig up my arguments on it tomorrow from the back pages of this thread.

I am curious what your comment will be to the fact that it appears global warming is over.
It doesn't appear to be the case at all (see for example Fawcett & Jones, 2008 (http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf)).

William

2009-Jul-05, 01:41 PM

Ari, I have been reading and thinking about Hansen's paper.

http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf

Ari,

I am still thinking about Hansen's predicted temperature rise Vs the actual rise that has been measured (See the quote above). As the CO2 effect is logarithmic, the first increase in CO2 has the greatest affect on planetary temperature. To get a 3C rise for a doubling of CO2 one needs a massive positive feedback for forcings. As I noted (provided papers to support the assertion) the 20th century data actually shows the feedback to forcings is negative not positive which is quite reasonable as planetary temperature stablizes as the planet gets warmer.

The predicted temperature rise for the current 30% increase in CO2 appears based on Hansen's paper to be 2.6C. As it appears the planet was started to cool, this scientific problem (there is quite an interesting mix of issues) should be resolved with new data.

(I agree the current cooling trend is mild however one needs to compare slight cooling to a 2.6C predicted temperature increase for the current CO2 increase.)

What is the amount of cooling that would invalidate the 3C/doubling of CO2 theory?

I am quite sure we will not resolve this issue with papers. The papers you link to do not support what you are saying. Planetary temperature does not for long periods of time correlate with atmospheric CO2 levels (The paper I linked to has the word Paradox in its title). Hansen's paper does not address the periods when there is not correlation (Paradox). A scientific discussion attempts to solve a problem. In a debate, one ignores the other side's logic and attempts to twists the facts to support the side of the argument which is advocated.

I would suggest that we should follow the planetary temperature data and side bar discussions that develop if the planet continues to cool or if it starts to warm.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/uah_jun09.png

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/uah_jun09.png

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-06, 06:44 AM

If the upper atmosphere was not as a system saturated, then the additional CO2 that has entered the atmosphere todate (using 280 ppm as a starting point) would using the author's model and assumptions have resulted in a 2C increase in planetary temperature.
...
The planet has not warmed 2C.
The quote from Hansen et al. that you gave already contained the explanation for this:

Ocean and ice sheet response times together account for this gap, which is now 2.0°C.
This 2°C warming Hansen et al talk about is the amount of warming that is still to come, they don't say that should already have happened. They are saying that even if we would stop everything now, the Earth would still continue to warm additional 2°C.

I am quite sure we will not resolve this issue with papers.
Scientific research is the only thing we have on these matters. I don't see why we should start ignoring the papers. I certainly will continue to cite them. Oh, by the way, I think I forgot to mention that the downward atmospheric infrared radiation has been measured to increase due to increasing greenhouse gases concentrations (Evans & Puckrin, 2006 (http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/100737.pdf)). Earlier I mentioned that the outgoing infrared radiation has been measured to decrease due to greenhouse gases. So, according to measurements, less IR radiation is going out and more is received on surface. Seems to be quite clear situation.

The papers you link to do not support what you are saying.
Claims like these are usually followed by details, but you have just ignored the specific arguments regarding your claimed lack of correlation between temperature and CO2.

Planetary temperature does not for long periods of time correlate with atmospheric CO2 levels...
Above some arguments have been presented against this claim of yours. How about addressing those arguments instead of handwaving and repeating the argument over and over?

(The paper I linked to has the word Paradox in its title)
And that is the argument that proves your case then?

Hansen's paper does not address the periods when there is not correlation (Paradox).
Nonsense. Above I asked you to compare Hansen et al. Figures 3 and 4 and "point out the places where there is the huge discrepancy between their derived total forcing in Fig. 4 (mainly determined by greenhouse gas forcing) and the temperature in Fig. 3.". You haven't answered this, but claim that they don't address the periods where you claim there is not correlation, and earlier you claimed that Hansen et al. ignore those periods. Hansen et al. don't ignore any periods during the last 65 million years, and they show that there is very tight correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature. Other papers I quoted showed that too, but you haven't said anything about them.

William

2009-Jul-08, 02:42 AM

"An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends" - Randel et al. (2009) (http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/2008JD010421.pdf):

I'll deal with the rest of your "arguments" later...

http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/5/0/5_53/_article

Some important recent findings in climate studies are the warming trend in the troposphere and the cooling trend in the stratosphere. However, the evidence for the cooling trend in the stratosphere may need to be revisited. This study presents evidence that the stratosphere is slightly warming since 1996. Using long-term Stratosphere Sounding Unit (SSU) measurements at channels 1 and 2 before 1996, we did obtain a cooling trend in the middle and upper parts of stratosphere similar to the findings for the lower stratosphere in literature (Ramaswamy et al. 2001; Fu et al. 2004). But, we also found that the temperature trend in the middle and upper stratosphere has alternated to warming since 1996.

Ari,

The paper you quoted (Randal et al) to show the stratosphere is cooling curiously does not use 2007, 2008, and 2009 data which shows the stratosphere is warming not cooling.

The finding of a cooling stratosphere makes sense as the tropical troposphere did not warm during the same period 2005 to 2009 based on the data analyzed using Douglass et al methodology.

The planetary temperature anomaly is moving to zero which is substantially different than the current prediction of 2.6C warming. It appears this winter the planetary temperature anomaly will move to negative.

The actual planetary data does not match the AWG hypothesis prediction of the planet surface, troposphere, or stratosphere. The blogs that discuss AWG warming and the papers quoted at those sites do not discuss the current data that does not support the theory.

Comment:
The data that shows there is a lack of correlation with past CO2 levels and planetary temperature is unequivical and indicates that the CO2 mechanism saturates. The current planetary temperature anamoly of Zero (0C) Vs a predicted cooling of 2.6C supports that assertion. I am currently in Ashland, Oregon so I do not have access to all the data. I will reply on this subject later.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-08, 05:43 AM

Some important recent findings in climate studies are the warming trend in the troposphere and the cooling trend in the stratosphere. However, the evidence for the cooling trend in the stratosphere may need to be revisited. This study presents evidence that the stratosphere is slightly warming since 1996. Using long-term Stratosphere Sounding Unit (SSU) measurements at channels 1 and 2 before 1996, we did obtain a cooling trend in the middle and upper parts of stratosphere similar to the findings for the lower stratosphere in literature (Ramaswamy et al. 2001; Fu et al. 2004). But, we also found that the temperature trend in the middle and upper stratosphere has alternated to warming since 1996.
Curiously, you didn't quote the explanation they proposed for this:

The reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration.
Furthermore, what Liu & Weng don't mention in their abstract is that after about 2002 (see their Figure 4), stratosphere has been cooling again. In fact, both SSU 1 (middle stratosphere) and MSU 4 (lower stratosphere) show quite steady cooling trend between 1979 and 2007, but Mt Pinatubo eruption clearly mixes the situation in 1990's enough that if one chooses 1996 as a start point for a linear trendline, one can claim that there's "warming" going on. SSU 2 (upper stratosphere) seems to show about zero trend over 1979-2007.

There are couple of things one needs to consider here. First, Liu & Weng use problematic data set:

The SSU data are rarely applied due to its complicated sensor response and the leaking problem in the CO2 cell pressure modulator.
They then mention that they apply a correction. However, note that the problem lies in the "CO2 cell" which is rather elementary if one wants to study how CO2 affects climate. Later they mention that this is first time SSU 2 data is even used for climate studies.

Second, Liu & Weng use only one data set for each stratosphere layer (upper, middle, and lower). Randel et al. (2009) use sevaral different data sets (satellite, radiosonde, lidar) and get a clear global cooling trend for the same time period that Liu & Weng studied.

In the light of all this, suggesting that Liu & Weng show that stratosphere has started warming is premature.

The paper you quoted (Randal et al) to show the stratosphere is cooling curiously does not use 2007, 2008, and 2009 data which shows the stratosphere is warming not cooling.
The paper you quoted (Liu & Weng) uses the data from 1979-2007, and so does Randel et al. Previously you showed a blog entry advertising some paper that might or might not get published some day, and that blog entry was about troposphere, not stratosphere. Do you know the difference between troposphere and stratosphere?

So, which data shows that stratosphere has been warming since 2007?

The finding of a cooling stratosphere makes sense as the tropical troposphere did not warm during the same period 2005 to 2009 based on the data analyzed using Douglass et al methodology.
Ok, since you insist on this. Earlier I have said that:

"You offer some blog-entry from ClimateAudit about some paper nobody in public has seen yet. Apparently, that should show that even with Santer et al. method some statistically significant difference between models and observations arises. Note that they do not (according to abstract) show Santer et al. analysis method wrong and especially they do not show Santer et al. arguments about flaws in Douglass et al. wrong."

This RealClimate article (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/10/tropical-tropopshere-iii/) explains Santer et al. study and gives further links. Bottomline with my argument is that Santer et al. have shown that Douglass et al. methodology is flawed, but you have not addressed this and continue to advertise the methodology of that paper.

Earlier I have provided a link to Haimberger et al. (2008) (http://homepage.univie.ac.at/leopold.haimberger/i1520-0442-21-18-4587.pdf) which shows different results than Douglass et al.:

In the tropical upper troposphere, where the predicted amplification of surface trends is largest, there is no significant discrepancy between trends from RICH–RAOBCORE version 1.4 and the range of temperature trends from climate models. This result directly contradicts the conclusions of a recent paper by Douglass et al. (2007).

Earlier I have also said that:

"But let's assume for argument's sake that Douglass et al. (2007) are correct and there is a real difference between the models and the observations in the tropical troposphere. In this situation, nobody would yet know why the models don't follow the observations in tropics. Yet, you claim that Douglass et al. "essentially disproves that CO2 has the cause of the 20th century warming". How would you know that it is specifically the CO2 that is wrong instead of numerous other possibilities? Douglass et al. discuss possible differences in tropical temperatures between the models and the observations, and they don't even mention CO2 in their paper. Claiming that CO2 effects are ruled out based on this paper is false."

You have ignored this argument. I'll extend the argument further. This tropical troposphere thing is not global, but effects of CO2 are global. CO2 mixes in atmosphere very well, so any differences between models and observed troposphere temperatures should be visible all over the globe instead of just the tropics if the CO2 forcing wouldn't be as strong as expected.

Earlier I have also said that:

"Even if you believe that Douglass et al. is correct, you need to ask why it is happening only in tropics, where (coincidentally) the distribution of radiosondes is sparse. You also need to ask what other causes there might be for models to be wrong (that is, if they even would be wrong) only in tropics. Could there be some grand but yet local phenomenon that might be difficult to model, such as some large oscillation? Instead of asking these questions, you are leaping to a conclusion that CO2 is not causing warming. I find your approach very unscientific."

The planetary temperature anomaly is moving to zero which is substantially different than the current prediction of 2.6C warming. It appears this winter the planetary temperature anomaly will move to negative.
Planet is warming as expected (Fawcett & Jones, 2008 (http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf)), cherry-picking some few year trends doesn't change that (Easterling & Wehner, 2009 (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf)).

The actual planetary data does not match the AWG hypothesis prediction of the planet surface, troposphere, or stratosphere. The blogs that discuss AWG warming and the papers quoted at those sites do not discuss the current data that does not support the theory.
You keep accusing of others ignoring the evidence, but you are ignoring the evidence yourself, you are only cherry-picking the evidence that (you think) supports your case. In last few posts, I have provided lot of evidence against your arguments, but you have not addressed most of them.

The data that shows there is a lack of correlation with past CO2 levels and planetary temperature is unequivical...
I have already shown that the data you have used to show this is not trustworthy, and I have presented more thorough data and analysis showing that there is tight correlation between the two. You continue to make the same claim without addressing counterarguments and evidence.

Stroller

2009-Jul-08, 09:25 AM

I have presented more thorough data and analysis showing that there is tight correlation between the two. (Temperature and co2)
My parentheses.

If you call Changes in co2 lagging behind changes in temperature by between 800 and 2800 years "tight". If temperature changes first and co2 changes afterwards, then it is changes in temperature causing the changes in co2, not the other way round.

Now I know you will come back and tell me that once the co2 rises, it causes the temperature to rise further. This is quite likely true, but the amount is not known and so climate sensitivity to co2 cannot be determined from ice cores. Moreover, since temperature starts to rise 800-2800 years before co2 does, co2 is clearly not the primary driver which takes us into or out of ice ages, as William is trying to point out.

As DeWitt Payne puts it:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/explaining-ice-core-co2-lag/
"CO2 amplification is a plausible hypothesis and very likely made some contribution to the temperature change. The size of the amplification, however, cannot be determined from ice core evidence alone because there are too many other things we know much less about starting with ice/albedo feedback."

It is obvious therefore that both co2 and temperature are being driven by something else as we go into and come out of ice ages and other major climate shifts such as Dansgaard Oeschger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard-Oeschger_event) events and Bond events.

Speaking of which, the last Bond event was around 400-800AD.
The population of Europe was halved during this cold snap due to the four horsemen going on the rampage, and we're overdue the next one starting by 50 years on the average. They seem to vary in periodicity by a hundred years or so.
See Fred Singer's book 'Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1500 Years'.

Place bets now.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-08, 09:49 AM

Now I know you will come back and tell me that once the co2 rises, it causes the temperature to rise further. This is quite likely true, but the amount is not known and so climate sensitivity to co2 cannot be determined from ice cores.
Hansen et al. (2008) have determined climate sensitivity from ice cores (which also agrees well with determinations of others (http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm)), your declarative statements (without evidence backing them up) don't change that. They are also able to recreate the past temperature with simple greenhouse gas forcings and feedbacks which is something you can't do without a tight correlation. In last few posts I have offered plenty of scientific evidence showing that correlation in past climate changes. Perhaps you should try to offer some scientific evidence to back your sayings for once.

G O R T

2009-Jul-08, 01:13 PM

Hansen et al. (2008) have determined climate sensitivity from ice cores (which also agrees well with determinations of others (http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm)), your declarative statements (without evidence backing them up) don't change that. They are also able to recreate the past temperature with simple greenhouse gas forcings and feedbacks which is something you can't do without a tight correlation. In last few posts I have offered plenty of scientific evidence showing that correlation in past climate changes. Perhaps you should try to offer some scientific evidence to back your sayings for once.

Yes, we all know that temperature and CO2 are linked in the data.

But why??? Let's drop the present where mankind is affecting things.

Minor short term changes in insolation (Milankovitch) do not explain why long glacial cycles full of rapid largescale swings persist. Insolation continues to vary, but the glaciation once set in motion continues through its cycle,

Why is average cooling so slow? Why is interglacial warming so fast? In what way does CO2 cause this? During glaciation, are the oceans warmer or colder? If colder, how did glaciation ever end? Does earths albedo suddenly change after 90,000 years? What was the peak atmospheric CO2 concentration during the last interglacial? (hint: resolution not sufficient to determine short term spikes) The questions are endless, and not answered by the data so far.

Again, CO2 is linked somehow and to some extent to surface temperature.
This explains little, so lets move on.
What is actually causing the glacial/interglacial cycles?
Previously posted links state that the Sun is not causing them, the position of the continents is not causing them, ocean currents are not causing them...
What, pray tell, is causing them?

jlhredshift

2009-Jul-08, 01:19 PM

Yes, we all know that temperature and CO2 are linked in the data.

But why??? Let's drop the present where mankind is affecting things.

Minor short term changes in insolation (Milankovitch) do not explain why long glacial cycles full of rapid largescale swings persist. Insolation continues to vary, but the glaciation once set in motion continues through its cycle,

Why is average cooling so slow? Why is interglacial warming so fast? In what way does CO2 cause this? During glaciation, are the oceans warmer or colder? If colder, how did glaciation ever end? Does earths albedo suddenly change after 90,000 years? What was the peak atmospheric CO2 concentration during the last interglacial? (hint: resolution not sufficient to determine short term spikes) The questions are endless, and not answered by the data so far.

Again, CO2 is linked somehow and to some extent to surface temperature.
This explains little, so lets move on.
What is actually causing the glacial/interglacial cycles?
Previously posted links state that the Sun is not causing them, the position of the continents is not causing them, ocean currents are not causing them...
What, pray tell, is causing them?

Good summary G O R T. We know how they melt, but the origination is still in dispute.

William

2009-Jul-08, 01:52 PM

Curiously, you didn't quote the explanation they proposed for this:

Furthermore, what Liu & Weng don't mention in their abstract is that after about 2002 (see their Figure 4), stratosphere has been cooling again. In fact, both SSU 1 (middle stratosphere) and MSU 4 (lower stratosphere) show quite steady cooling trend between 1979 and 2007, but Mt Pinatubo eruption clearly mixes the situation in 1990's enough that if one chooses 1996 as a start point for a linear trendline, one can claim that there's "warming" going on. SSU 2 (upper stratosphere) seems to show about zero trend over 1979-2007.

There are couple of things one needs to consider here. First, Liu & Weng use problematic data set:

In the light of all this, suggesting that Liu & Weng show that stratosphere has started warming is premature.

So, which data shows that stratosphere has been warming since 2007?

Ok, since you insist on this. Earlier I have said that:

"You offer some blog-entry from ClimateAudit about some paper nobody in public has seen yet. Apparently, that should show that even with Santer et al. method some statistically significant difference between models and observations arises. Note that they do not (according to abstract) show Santer et al. analysis method wrong and especially they do not show Santer et al. arguments about flaws in Douglass et al. wrong."

This RealClimate article (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/10/tropical-tropopshere-iii/) explains Santer et al. study and gives further links. Bottomline with my argument is that Santer et al. have shown that Douglass et al. methodology is flawed, but you have not addressed this and continue to advertise the methodology of that paper.

"But let's assume for argument's sake that Douglass et al. (2007) are correct and there is a real difference between the models and the observations in the tropical troposphere. In this situation, nobody would yet know why the models don't follow the observations in tropics. Yet, you claim that Douglass et al. "essentially disproves that CO2 has the cause of the 20th century warming". How would you know that it is specifically the CO2 that is wrong instead of numerous other possibilities? Douglass et al. discuss possible differences in tropical temperatures between the models and the observations, and they don't even mention CO2 in their paper. Claiming that CO2 effects are ruled out based on this paper is false."

You have ignored this argument. I'll extend the argument further. This tropical troposphere thing is not global, but effects of CO2 are global. CO2 mixes in atmosphere very well, so any differences between models and observed troposphere temperatures should be visible all over the globe instead of just the tropics if the CO2 forcing wouldn't be as strong as expected.

Earlier I have also said that:

"Even if you believe that Douglass et al. is correct, you need to ask why it is happening only in tropics, where (coincidentally) the distribution of radiosondes is sparse. You also need to ask what other causes there might be for models to be wrong (that is, if they even would be wrong) only in tropics. Could there be some grand but yet local phenomenon that might be difficult to model, such as some large oscillation? Instead of asking these questions, you are leaping to a conclusion that CO2 is not causing warming. I find your approach very unscientific."

Planet is warming as expected (Fawcett & Jones, 2008 (http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf)), cherry-picking some few year trends doesn't change that (Easterling & Wehner, 2009 (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf)).

Ari,
As I said, the posting on ClimateAudit processed the new post 2007 data using Santer's methodology to show the troposphere was not warming. The unproccessed data (which is publically available) and the processed data was then sent to Santer for comment. (No comment received as of yet.)

The paper that shows the stratosphere is warming rather than cooling post 2006, did not as you assert, use flawed data. The data did not support the AWG conclusion. Yes the authors, to get their paper published, stated that the cause of stratosphere warming could be a recovery of the ozone. It also could be that the CO2 mechanism is saturate so the upper troposphere does not warm significantly due to additional CO2 and hence the stratosphere does not cool.

The recent planetary data (lower troposphere) shows cooling not warming.

Yes, I agree the cooling todate has been modest, however, there is evidence in both hemispheres of a change in forcing which will lead to more cooling

Stroller

2009-Jul-08, 02:09 PM

for once.

I'm not going to be replying to posts which contain thinly veiled insults.

Stroller

2009-Jul-08, 02:21 PM

What is actually causing the glacial/interglacial cycles?
Previously posted links state that the Sun is not causing them, the position of the continents is not causing them, ocean currents are not causing them...
What, pray tell, is causing them?
The sun has been doing it's thing since long before the history of Earth began 4.5+ billion years ago. We think it's output has increased some 30% during this time.

We have a few hundred years of direct sunspot observational counts, plus some fragmentary Chinese records. We also have a few proxy series of tree ring data (which vary worldwide), Be10 deposition (which varies worldwide) and some evidence which says there were fewer sunspots at times when there was widespread cold during the Maunder minimum.

To discount the sun as a possible cause for ice ages would seem somewhat premature to me when we base our belief in it's constant output on a series representing 0.000...0001% of it's activity.

JESMKS

2009-Jul-08, 10:26 PM

GORT asked a question about the cause of glacial cycles. The Pleistocene glacial cycles wouldn't necessarily need a change in solar energy for there occurrence. The glacial cycles were accompanied by a great increase in precipitation that created many large lakes outside of the glaciated areas. For example, Lake Bonneville in Utah had a surface area of about 20,000 square miles and a depth of 1,000 feet and would have been large and deeper if it hadn't created a spillway to the Snake River. If the annual precipitation, should double, we would probably have the beginning of another ice age as the existing glaciers would grow in size and new ones would form in areas where snow accumulation exceeds the amount of annul melting. The Pleistocene Epoch was a time of very active volcanism. Maybe the particulate emissions from these volcanoes triggered the increse in precipitation and periods of volcanic activity created the cyclic growth and melting of the glaciers. A detailed examination of a drill core penetrating the unconsolidated sediments beneath the Great Salt Lake in Utah could tell us a lot about the history of the ice ages.

jlhredshift

2009-Jul-08, 11:50 PM

A detailed examination of a drill core penetrating the unconsolidated sediments beneath the Great Salt Lake in Utah could tell us a lot about the history of the ice ages.

Hart et al 2004 GSA Bulletin;

The 87Sr/86Sr ratios of lacustrine carbonates and lake-level history of the
Bonneville paleolake system

ABSTRACT
Lakes in the Bonneville basin have fluctuated
dramatically in response to changes in
rainfall, temperature, and drainage diversion
during the Quaternary. We analyzed tufas
and shells from shorelines of known ages in
order to develop a relation between 87Sr/86Sr
ratio of carbonates and lake level, which then
can be used as a basis for constraining lake
level from similar analyses on carbonates
in cores. Carbonates from the late Quaternary
shorelines yield the following average
87Sr/86Sr ratios: 0.71173 for the Stansbury
shoreline (22–20 14C ka; 1350 m), 0.71153
for the Bonneville shoreline (15.5–14.5 14C
ka; 1550 m), 0.71175 for the Provo shoreline
(14.4–14.0 14C ka; 1450 m), 0.71244 for the
Gilbert shoreline (~10.3–10.9 14C ka; 1300 m),
and 0.71469 for the modern Great Salt Lake
(1280 m). These analyses show that the 87Sr/
86Sr ratio of lacustrine carbonates changes
substantially at low- to mid-lake levels but is
invariant at mid- to high-lake levels.
Sr-isotope mixing models of Great Salt
Lake and the Bonneville paleolake system
were constructed to explain these variations
in 87Sr/86Sr ratios with change in lake level.
Our model of the Bonneville system produced
a 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.71193, very close
to the observed ratios from high-shoreline
tufa and shell. The model verifies that the
integration of the southern Sevier and Beaver
rivers with the Bear and others rivers in
the north is responsible for the lower 87Sr/86Sr
ratios in Lake Bonneville compared to the
modern Great Salt Lake. We also modeled
the 87Sr/86Sr ratio of Lake Bonneville with
the upper Bear River diverted into the Snake
River basin and obtained an 87Sr/86Sr ratio
of 0.71414. Coincidentally, this ratio is close
to the observed ratio for Great Salt Lake of
0.71469. This means that 87Sr/86Sr ratios of
>0.714 for carbonate can be produced by
climatically induced low-lake conditions or
by diversion of the upper Bear River out of
the Bonneville basin. This model result also
demonstrates that the upper Bear River
had to be fl owing into the Bonneville basin
during highstands of other late Quaternary
lake cycles: carbonates from the Little Valley
(130–160 ka) and Cutler Dam (59 ± 5 ka) lake
cycles returned 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.71166 and
0.71207, respectively, and are too low to be
produced by a lake without the upper Bear
River input.

Those lakes existed for long periods and several glacial / interglacial times.

Also, once the ice cap was established the jet stream moved south to provide additional moisture to what is now the desert southwest.

Bear Lake was cored. Kaufman et al 2005 (http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2005AM/finalprogram/abstract_93024.htm); MULTI-PROXY EVIDENCE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE DURING THE LAST TWO GLACIAL-INTERGLACIAL CYCLES FROM CORE BL00-1, BEAR LAKE, UTAH-IDAHO See PPT link bottom left.

jlhredshift

2009-Jul-09, 01:42 AM

Gillianren

2009-Jul-09, 02:21 AM

1. I only bold to segregate thoughts.

And you do so sparingly. No, I speak entirely to William's (to me irritating) tendency to change the size of the font; bolding, when done for the reason listed, is not a problem.

2. For me, weather is local, climate is the culmination of long periods of weather over the entire planet.

In other words, "Look! This place is having a cold summer!" is not climate and therefore not a very good rebuttal, right?

3. Politicians saying it isn't so.

So the last administration should have convinced you, right?

But, seriously, Humans are having an impact on the planet, so did the mammoths and mastodons. Even nuclear winter would only have a transitory effect. All those indecipherable squiggles on those graphs indicate change in climate, we will never be able to flat line it. Some cycles could be as short as fifteen hundred years. Yet, Antarctica has been glaciated for fifty million years and the orbital cycles are leading towards a cooling. There are way to many factors involved in the climate to say that doing one thing will interrupt the planets cycles. Therefore, unless there is some political motivation to support AGW, we need to continue trying to understand how this planet works and not focus on just one component. We Humans have dealt with climate change in the past and we will do so in the future, we have no choice. I am an optimist not a fatalist.

I think you are shortsighted.

So, let me ask you, what would convince you that man does not control the climate of this blue orb?

The Colorado River flowing to the sea.

Control? No. Change? Demonstrably.

jlhredshift

2009-Jul-09, 02:42 AM

And you do so sparingly. No, I speak entirely to William's (to me irritating) tendency to change the size of the font; bolding, when done for the reason listed, is not a problem..

Thank You.

In other words, "Look! This place is having a cold summer!" is not climate and therefore not a very good rebuttal, right?.

No, one summer is a perturbation, but be careful, we do not fully understand how these things start. It could be ..cool..normal..normal..cool.. cool.. etc.

So the last administration should have convinced you, right?.

Sadly, no, they did not take a forceful enough stand. (If that's political, I apologize.)

I think you are shortsighted..

I do need new glasses, it's getting harder to read.

The Colorado River flowing to the sea..

Yet, that water puts food on your table, I'm not going back to the stone age. The buffalo by their living on the plains changed the ecosystem by cropping and poohing, I want to leave them alone.

Control? No. Change? Demonstrably.

My Bold.

No, minor changes might occur.

Wilson et al 2000; The Great Ice Age; pg 91

...our understanding of the Earth's climate system does not yet enable us to fully explain past changes of climate, let alone predict what the consequences will be of our global experiment in changing the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere.

G O R T

2009-Jul-09, 04:14 AM

The sun has been doing it's thing since long before the history of Earth began 4.5+ billion years ago. We think it's output has increased some 30% during this time.

We have a few hundred years of direct sunspot observational counts, plus some fragmentary Chinese records. We also have a few proxy series of tree ring data (which vary worldwide), Be10 deposition (which varies worldwide) and some evidence which says there were fewer sunspots at times when there was widespread cold during the Maunder minimum.

To discount the sun as a possible cause for ice ages would seem somewhat premature to me when we base our belief in it's constant output on a series representing 0.000...0001% of it's activity.

I said, "Previously posted links state that the Sun is not causing them".

But let's look at that.

I might accept that the Sun is responsible for the 2,000,000 year decent into this ice age. It may not even be our suns fault directly, but rather this region of space that our sun travels through every 250,000,000 years or so. I can accept that our sun has periodic fits that cause repeated and somewhat regular glitches in our climate.

What I cannot accept is that those glitches shifted from 41,000 years to 100,000 while being punctuating at 1470 years and declining for over 2,000,000 years.

HELLO!

Every article and paper cannot resist ignoring, refuting, or marginalizing competing ideas. If you close your eyes you can almost see the cliques form and start to shun each other. Absurd! Not only are many of the suspected causes probably involved, but there is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla still lingering in the room somewhere and no one is even looking for him.

Gillianren

2009-Jul-09, 05:08 AM

Sadly, no, they did not take a forceful enough stand. (If that's political, I apologize.)

I cannot respond, I think, without being political. I will merely say that any statement from a politician of any stripe ought not to be taken seriously enough to be seen as more important than what is being said, over and over, by those in the field. Ask biologists.

Yet, that water puts food on your table, I'm not going back to the stone age. The buffalo by their living on the plains changed the ecosystem by cropping and poohing, I want to leave them alone.

It is, however, an example of a major influence that humans have had on the world within a very short time. Less than a hundred years ago, the fact that we could prevent a river from draining into the sea would have been unthinkable, yet it happened. Or take the Dust Bowl. Yes, it's true that cyclical droughts are a regular occurrence on the Great Plains, but the removal of all that sod and the poor farming techniques are what created storms of dust so great that they blackened the skies of Manhattan.

I do not dispute that other species have influenced the ecosystems in which they have lived, though it seems a more symbiotic relationship for most species, in that they change the ecosystem as the ecosystem changes them. However, the only example I can give of non-human animals completely wiping out other species are when they are invasive species introduced by humans. And, again, I do not claim that humans control the climate, as that implies that there is deliberate choice to change it as opposed to unintended consequences from human behaviour. However, we have in our time created enormous ecological change, and not just over a short span, either. I think it naive to suggest that all those changes cannot build up into huge, devastating ones. Yes, the change in that river contributes to the lifestyle I lead. On the other hand, when you're not wanting to do anything to the buffalo, do you spare any thought for the animals who used to depend on the Colorado?

mugaliens

2009-Jul-09, 05:58 AM

TNo, minor changes might occur.

Wilson et al 2000; The Great Ice Age; pg 91

What we do know from the geological record is that there is a periodicity involved.

Every article and paper cannot resist ignoring, refuting, or marginalizing competing ideas. If you close your eyes you can almost see the cliques form and start to shun each other. Absurd! Not only are many of the suspected causes probably involved, but there is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla still lingering in the room somewhere and no one is even looking for him.

Agreed! Well put. And as to that gorilla, it may even be a troop of them, relatively quiet as they are, yet far more powerful than the insanely loud howler monkeys that have been all over the headlines.

It is, however, an example of a major influence that humans have had on the world within a very short time.

I agree.

Less than a hundred years ago, the fact that we could prevent a river from draining into the sea would have been unthinkable...

I disagree. The 126 km long Westfriese Omringdijk was completed in 1250, holding out the entire ocean from 800 square kilometers. Roman chronicler Tacitus mentions the fact that Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land and protect their retreat - circa 70 AD.

...the only example I can give of non-human animals completely wiping out other species are when they are invasive species introduced by humans.

This is a common, but pervasive misconception, as both fauna and flora have been successfully ousting competing species since either were little more than clumps in the oceans' tidepools. The effects tend to be cyclical, with some occurring every year, and others occurring every 17 years, or even much, much longer. Regardless of the length of the cycle, who or what owns what piece of real estate has ebbed and flowed over time.

And, again, I do not claim that humans control the climate, as that implies that there is deliberate choice to change it as opposed to unintended consequences from human behaviour.

Agreed.

However, we have in our time created enormous ecological change, and not just over a short span, either.

Agreed.

I think it naive to suggest that all those changes cannot build up into huge, devastating ones.

While I agree that it's possible, yes, to date, I haven't seen it, dustbowl and all. While signficantly affected the irrigated lands of the US midwest, it didn't affect Europe. In fact, it affected 154,000 square miles, which is a square area less than 400 miles on a side. That's a dot compared to the land mass of the Earth, and truthfully it affected little else other than the areas in which crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops, and other techniques weren't practiced. The Plains grasses had evolved to be great at resisting drought. Not so the crop-transformed Plains sans it's great grasses.

Having said all that, we humans have had a vastly greater impact on our world, primarily the oceans, than we have had on our land masses.

Ari Jokimaki

2009-Jul-09, 06:55 AM

Why is average cooling so slow? Why is interglacial warming so fast? In what way does CO2 cause this?
I think the main reason for this is that CO2 tends to stay in the atmosphere so long. It is easier to get it there fast than to get it out fast.

During glaciation, are the oceans warmer or colder? If colder, how did glaciation ever end?
Definitely colder. Hansen et al. (2008) (http://www.biochar-international.org/images/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf) mention in their supplementary material a possible mechanism how Earth came back from snowball-state (which is more severe cold condition than the regular glaciations that you seem to talk about):

The mechanism that allowed Earth to escape the snowball state was probably reduced weathering in a glaciated world, which allowed CO2 to accumulate in the atmosphere [S5].

Does earths albedo suddenly change after 90,000 years?
Albedo changes are a feedback. You have to remember that during glaciation, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is low. In a situation like that, any change that can add CO2 to the atmosphere can make a difference, because climate is more sensitive to the CO2 addition when CO2 concentration is low.

What is actually causing the glacial/interglacial cycles?
Previously posted links state that the Sun is not causing them, the position of the continents is not causing them, ocean currents are not causing them...
What, pray tell, is causing them?
Well, I remember posting links to these papers few days ago:
"Orbital changes and climate" - Ruddiman (2006) (http://www.falw.vu/~peef/teaching/orbital_forcing/assets/Ruddiman_2006_QSR.pdf)
"Resolving Milankovitch: Consideration of signal and noise" - Meyers et al. (2008) (http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~mp364/data/2008%20Meyers.pdf)

I think answer is (roughly): Milankovich cycles (timing) + GHGs (amplitude) + other feedbacks (amplitude).

Stroller

2009-Jul-09, 08:49 AM

What I cannot accept is that those glitches shifted from 41,000 years to 100,000 while being punctuating at 1470 years and declining for over 2,000,000 years.

HELLO!

I hear you.

jlhredshift and I had a brief ponder over the shift from 41,000 year interglacials to 100,000 year interglacials the other day on the geology thread.

The effects of the motion of the solar system through galactic space which is less than homogenous is the big unknown I agree. Maybe we can discern a little from the 10Be record with regard to cosmic ray incidence, but as these vary over the earth due to modulation by geomagnetic influence which is in turn affected by the suns vageries, it's difficult to be conclusive.

There is so much we don't know about the factors which affect earth's climates (plural), that we need to keep an open mind on all hypotheses which seek to integrate the knowledge we do have. To try to pin it on changes in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas which is weaker in it's effect than much more prevalent water vapour and only has a residence time of a decade or so seems blinkered to me.

If you close your eyes you can almost see the cliques form and start to shun each other. Absurd! Not only are many of the suspected causes probably involved, but there is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla still lingering in the room somewhere and no one is even looking for him.

I don't join cliques, I hang out with them and discuss my own ideas and theirs. And get dragged into arguments. :)

I think the sun is the biggest gorilla on the block and I think I've also worked out how he has a bigger effect on changes in climate than has been assumed, and how that effect has been 'hidden'. More on that soon.