by Judith Curry
The National Academies Press has published a new document: Frontiers in Decadal Climate Variability: Proceedings of a Workshop.
Excerpts from the Overview and Introduction provide context:
Many factors contribute to variability in Earth’s climate on a range of timescales, from seasons to decades. Natural climate variability arises from two different sources: (1) internal variability from interactions among components of the climate system, for example, between the ocean and the atmosphere, and (2) natural external forcings, such as variations in the amount of radiation from the Sun. External forcings on the climate system also arise from some human activities, such as the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols. The climate that we experience is a combination of all of these factors.
In September 2015, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and the Ocean Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to examine variability in Earth’s climate on decadal timescales, defined as 10 to 30 years. During the workshop, ocean and climate scientists reviewed the state of the science of decadal climate variability and its relationship to rates of human-caused global warming, and they explored opportunities for improvement in modeling and observations and assessing knowledge gaps. This report summarizes the workshop presentations and discussions.
A major line of inquiry discussed at the workshop is the degree to which natural variability modulated human-caused climate change during the recent warming slowdown, as well as during past periods of increased or accelerated warming, such as from 1970 to 1998. Also discussed was the extent to which previous results are a function of data coverage or remaining biases in sea surface temperature (SST) reconstructions.
The specific mechanisms driving decadal variability, not only in the Pacific but also in all of the ocean basins, are subjects of intense scientific inquiry.
Because the storage of heat in the ocean has been implicated in the recent warming slowdown as measured by GMST, participants discussed the limitations of using GMST as the primary metric of global climate change. Many participants supported the notion that, because 93 percent of the excess heat from GHGs is stored in the ocean, sea-level rise, or sea-level rise together with GMST, may be a more appropriate metric of global climate change.
Variability at decadal timescales is a well-known feature of the climate system. Climate models produce periods of slower and more accelerated warming, although a specific slowdown in the GMST warming trend in the early 2000s was not directly projected by climate models (the warming trend during this period was near the lower edge of the 5-95 percent range of projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. Much remains to be learned before scientists will be able to make skillful predictions of variability on these timescales, however.
The slowdown in the GMST warming trend during the early 2000s spurred a lot of research aimed at identifying variability in observations and models, as well as attributing its mechanisms.
- What physical mechanisms can explain recent as well as past decadal variability?
- How much of the variability in recent trends in surface warming is due to internal, natural variability versus external forcing, and how does this attribution vary as a function of timescale?
- Given what is known today about the controls on decadal variability, what can be said about the future?
- Are such accelerations and slowdowns predictable?
- What observations, data synthesis, and improvements in climate models might be needed to provide comprehensive answers to such questions?
- Finally, what is the best way to measure the influence of human-emitted GHGs on the global climate?
- Is GMST the best metric?
- Misc insightful statements from the text:
The closing section on Frontiers and Research Opportunities identifies the following knowledge gaps:
Although much progress is being made toward understanding decadal variability, as presented at the workshop, important questions remain, in particular in separating the contributions of each proposed driver. Many of the mechanisms examined might be driving decadal variability, but what is driving the mechanisms themselves? For example,
- If Pacific Decadal Variability (PDV) is a combination of different modes, how can they be parsed out? What role does each play? What is the mechanism for each mode?
- Although the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) seems to drive Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), what drives NAO multi-decadal variability?
Other knowledge gaps include the following:
- The connection between Arctic sea ice loss and mid-latitude weather, and the consequential regional effects;
- The role of and quantitative data on stratification of the deep Southern Ocean;
- The relative importance of atmospheric vs. oceanic bridges in linking stochastic processes at mid-to-high latitudes (how does local atmospheric forcing produce remote response(s) on decadal timescales?); and
- How heat trapped in the ocean will be transported into the deeper layers in the one or two decades and how that might affect global temperatures in the future.
In addition to improving prediction capabilities, addressing the gaps in knowledge of decadal climate variability could lead to better-informed climate change attribution studies, that is, the ability to detect the signals of anthropogenic climate change and internal variability distinctively for certain events with much greater accuracy. Both the prediction of decadal climate variability and attribution of specific climatic events and trends can be used to better inform decision makers.
JC reflections
It is certainly gratifying to see this topic being addressed by the NAS, since decadal variability is too often dismissed by the ‘establishment’ as climate ‘noise.’ The questions asked in the report, and the knowledge gaps, raise the important unresolved issues.
There are no particularly new insights in the report, and there is much interesting (and recent) research on this topic that didn’t get mentioned. The most scientifically interesting chapter is the one on Modes and Mechanisms of Internal Variability, particularly Mechanisms Driving Pacific Decadal Variability (specifically, the work of Antoinette Capotondi). There is also an interesting section The Role of Uncertainty, mostly from the work of Baylor Fox-Kemper, that addressed uncertainties air/sea exchange rates and the deep storage of heat in the ocean.
What is missing from the report is the longer term context of multidecadal to millennial variability, and the importance of paleoclimate observations. Without this context, we are not going to make much progress on understanding and predicting the decadal variability in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Oceans.
The report of course includes the ‘obligatory’ statements:
- The Earth system (land, atmosphere, and ocean) continues to steadily warm through time in response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere from human activities.
- A slowdown in the rise of GMST is not equivalent to a slowdown in global warming. Viewed over long time periods (50+ years), there is a persistent increase in GMST. However, it remains important to understand the decadal variability in GMST that is observed over shorter time periods.
- Longer trends (50 years or more) in observed global mean surface temperature (GMST) in the recent century largely reflect increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Until these issues and knowledge gaps are sorted out, we don’t have the basis for making the above statements with high confidence.
Here’s to hoping that the climate community is ready to take more seriously the natural climate variability on time scales from decades to millennia.
Even if the climate is warming, so what? Will the world be better off or wore off. There seems to be no persuasive evidence that the world will be worse off if it warms. Put in context, a 3C warming would get the world back to the middle of its range. However, that seems to be highly unlikely in less than millions of years (no matter what the models suggest:
https://html2-f.scribdassets.com/9mhexie60w4ho2f2/images/1-9fa3d55a6c.jpg
“A major line of inquiry discussed at the workshop is the degree to which natural variability modulated human-caused climate change during the recent warming slowdown, as well as during past periods of increased or accelerated warming, such as from 1970 to 1998.”
This one statement seems to establish a fundamental bias to the outcome rather than critical open thinking.
Bias? You mean we are not the center of the universe?
Ptolemy
[IMG]http://www.librarypoint.org/sites/librarypoint.org/files/images/ptolemy.jpg[/IMG]
We are at the center of the visible Universe, and that is the only reference we have to our position in the Universe.
There’s good reason to believe the Universe is much much larger, but it will require us to travel significant distances to get any other perspective.
Thanks Jim – my thoughts exactly. Until they recognise that the man-made contribution to global temperature is as yet unknown, they cannot progress.
Over long time periods the Earth is undoubtedly warming. 13,000 years ago so much water was bound in glaciers that the sea level was 130 m lower than today. Damn that carbon dioxide! We need a ship or a tunnel to cross to England, instead of walking comfortably over dry land.
Curious George,
That statement is demonstrably wrong (or at least highly selective and biased.. The Earth has been cooling for the past 500 Ma, 50 Ma, 5 Ma, 1Ma, 5 ka, 2 ka, 1 ka.
https://html2-f.scribdassets.com/9mhexie60w4ho2f2/images/1-9fa3d55a6c.jpg
What are the uncertainties on the sea level change that are caused by tectonic plate movements and isostatic adjustments.
You’ve asked two different and essentially unrelated questions (at least on human time scales). The simple answer to both is: “Large”.
Your first question (regarding epeirogeny) seems to be largely ignored in sea level discussions, at least of the non-skeptical sort.
http://www.global-climate-change.org.uk/2-6-2.php
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F0-387-30843-1_244
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf
“A slowdown in the rise of GMST is not equivalent to a slowdown in global warming. Viewed over long time periods (50+ years), there is a persistent increase in GMST. However, it remains important to understand the decadal variability in GMST that is observed over shorter time periods.”
Given the severe problems with surface temperatures, including data manipulation, how can they use these with any degree of integrity? Aren’t they just saying – we believe in AGW regardless of what happens. How does that apply to pre 1950 data? How do any of these people explain all the heating from 1600-1950? And cooling from 1000-1600?
“Because the storage of heat in the ocean has been implicated in the recent warming slowdown as measured by GMST, participants discussed the limitations of using GMST as the primary metric of global climate change. Many participants supported the notion that, because 93 percent of the excess heat from GHGs is stored in the ocean, sea-level rise, or sea-level rise together with GMST, may be a more appropriate metric of global climate change.”
Oh, right, let’s use an even less precise measure to support AGW.
Yes, that’s why ARGO was the idea of an investment banker from Liberia.
Yes bigterguy, but there has been no pause in either GMST or sea-level rise so obviously they are more fit for use. They correlate better with rising CO² abundance and because not everybody knows that time to equilibrium is measured in half-centuries, they are more effective in selling the message of unbroken warming. I hope it’s clear I’m not being sarky, only realistic.
The bulk of the evidence says that the Earth cooled slightly for most of the last thousand years, up until ~1900. You have to cherry-pick data sets to get heating from 1600-1950.
Oh, please. Quality control on data is not eeebil “manipulation”. It’s just quality control, and it’s a prerequisite of good science.
If you want to show that the quality control on the temperature data is bad/wrong, you need to provide evidence, to counter all the evidence showing that the quality control improves the data. Or, y’know, produce your own analysis. The funny thing is, whenever anyone actually does their own thorough analysis, they end up finding that the temperature adjustments are fine. Because… (drumroll) they are.
This is just another one of those memes that gets repeated over and over and over again, until people believe it’s true.. but it has zero basis in fact.
I ignore the adjustments, but I also don’t look at the data the same as everyone else. It also shows it could not be from global Co2.
if fact it more likely shows it’s all decadal variation while Co2 is not even measureable.
Ahh. Just taking a guess, did you reach this conclusion by looking at the correlation between temperatures and variability over short time periods? (e.g., 10-20 years or less).
Considering the physics of how CO2 works to trap heat in the atmosphere, you wouldn’t see CO2’s effects on those timescales very well, so it’d make it look like CO2 was irrelevant.
But basically, you’d be fooling yourself with statistics. Just because CO2 acts relatively slowly (at least compared to ENSO), it doesn’t mean it’s not there. You’d have to make sure that your statistical model that could tease out those effects.
just under 80 million surface station records since 1940 (as well as 1950) show that the daily increase in temps for all of those stations from all over the world, that increase was slightly less than tonight’s cooling of the temps.
On top of that fact, you can explain the temperature increases we did see as regional changes to min temp.
Both of these are not what the fingerprint of Co2 would be at the surface.
Micro, I’m not sure I’m following you. The ‘daily increase is slightly less than the nightly cooling’? (???)
And why wouldn’t some regions warm more than others? Nights warming faster than days is also to be expected, if I recall correctly.
But I’m not sure if we’re getting off-topic. How does the surface data show that decadal variation is to blame for the warming, and not CO2? How does your test separate the two?
When you look at min to max (rising) and max to tomorrows min (falling), and compare them for all stations that collect a minimum of 360 days of data for a year to be included, rising is slightly smaller than falling.
It wasn’t a warming trend, they went from not being hot, to being hot (this the best I can describe it, go look at my links). And there has not been any evidence in the falling temperature data on both daily and annual scales that there is any loss in the ability of the planet to cool at night.
Because of the fingerprint.
I live in NE Ohio, we get either cool air out of the north, or hot humid air out of the tropics, it’s good for 10-20F swing in temps.The water vapor carries heat out of the tropics to cool elsewhere. But the daily swing in temps don’t change a lot, just the days starting temp, and it does this until the moisture moves away.
It looks to me, that the end of the 97 – 98 el nino the band of station mostly in 20-30N Lat all warmed up, but it looks like it happened in the US first, then Eurasia (you have to scroll down a bit to the Regional Graphs.
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/evidence-against-warming-from-carbon-dioxide/
But what you see is min temps move up and down at different times and at different places, when you average them all into one big lump, and carefully craft it, you can pull out a trend, but there isn’t a trend in min temps, and mostly max temps just follow what min temps do.
But there isn’t an underlying trend in the data, while the big swings here and there can explain a rising GAT as well as the step after the 97 el nino.
Measured CS by extra-tropic lat bands here
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/measuring-surface-climate-sensitivity/
All of the raw data is at the sourceforge link.
“The funny thing is, whenever anyone actually does their own thorough analysis, they end up finding that the temperature adjustments are fine”
That absolutely depends on who is paying them, of course.
Said like someone who hasn’t bothered to do their own analysis.
That’s… a warming trend. If the trend is up, it’s warming.
If the nights are warming, then they’re losing their ability to cool. Nights are when the most (net) cooling happens, and the nightly minimum is determined by how much the Earth can cool during that time. No?
Doesn’t seem to be any special crafting required. Just an average. That’s the least crafty you can get; it’s the broadest and most simple metric.
Of course regional variability will be greater than global variability.
Sorry, but I’m still stuck on this: why is this fingerprint not what you’d expect from anthropogenic global warming?
What do you expect to happen with warming from increased CO2, and why? That’s probably where you’re losing me.
I don’t look at the daily record like anyone else does that I’ve seen. Until you go and try to read what I’ve written up, you won’t follow what I’m not doing a very good job of explaining.
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/evidence-against-warming-from-carbon-dioxide/
Micro, I went to your website and read what you wrote there. But it’s mostly graphs; you don’t explain your reasoning very much.
There are problems with just using day-to-day (or seasonal) variation to try to get a global climate sensitivity. Air is continually being moved around the Earth, so the temperatures you’re measuring will change with seasonal changes in circulation.
The effects of CO2 are slow in comparison. CO2 causes heat to slowly accumulate in the atmosphere, and much of that heat is subsequently transferred to the oceans. How can your approach capture that? The timescales are completely different.
Benjamin, if this heat is slowly accumulating in the atmosphere how do you explain cooling in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere.
“CO2 causes heat to slowly accumulate in the atmosphere”
Utter drivel.
To have any effect, it has to have some effect on temperature.
Now, what I’m doing in many cases is comparing opposite polarity rates, any difference is a trend. So it is a very fine balance.
But there is change due to length of day, which also has opposite polarity temperature changing rates, but should also balance to zero at the end of the year. Then a collection of stations should average zero after averaging weather out, and you can always tell if the balance is one way or the other.
I don’t take much credence on ocean heat measurements. But I will point out that the only way it can on average cool more than warm, means extra heat is entering the area being measured only to cool off over night, maybe this is the missing heat, water vapor getting blown into a different direction, if its blown into well measured areas, irs detected as warming, if it blown out to see irs not measured at all.
erl,
The climate is a dynamic system. Some places are going to warm faster than others, while others will even cool over short timespans as the Earth as a whole warms.
Oceans carry the most heat around the world, and Antarctica is effectively cut off from the rest of the world’s oceans. It has its own current that flows around it, acting like a moat. For that reason, climate models show that Antarctica will warm much more unevenly than the rest of the planet – we expect high variability there.
But really, just remember that even as the Earth as a whole warms, individual regions will warm faster or slower. Regional variability is always higher than global variability.
Benjamin Winchester,
Only a foolish Warmist would believe CO2 could heat anything. An even more foolish Warmist might be silly enough to believe that any matter could accumulate heat, getting hotter day by day, and after 100 years of alternate night and day, be 1C hotter than it was 100 years before.
Foolish Warmists – a triumph of fantasy over fact.
CO2 heats nothing. 7 billion people produce a lot more heat than a billion people 150 years ago. Thermometers measure heat.
Remove the heat, temperatures fall. Remove CO2, nothing at all happens.
Cheers.
“CO2 causes heat to slowly accumulate in the atmosphere”
catweazle, even Judith and Dr. Lindzen and Dr. Spencer agree that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, slowing the loss of heat to space. If you don’t agree with that, I’m not sure what you’re doing here.
Not like there’s any basis for denying it. It’s basic radiative physics. You might as well say that the Earth is flat and sits atop the back of a giant tortoise.
Benjamin, I don’t know what your worry is. The bulk of the globe is a bit too cold for comfort and there is very little of it that achieves a temperature of 25°C, the optimum for photosynthesis over a sufficient number of months to reliably support an agricultural enterprise. Plants are at the base of the food chain.
You know, those problem gases that you are concerned with are very well mixed. We should see a base rate of temperature increase at all times, winter and summer, month by month in all locations if that radiative effect that concerns you were to be a factor in the real world. We don’t. There are massive differences according to latitude and hemisphere that you will never see if you only ever look at the global temperature statistic.
There is a very consistent pattern of temperature variability according to the month of the year that can inform us as to what’s going on and what is forcing change. Your AGG are plainly not involved.
Get your hands dirty, get out of the armchair and into the real world.
Couple points. First don’t forget any slowing still happens at the speed of light.
Second, let’s say Co2 adds 30Whr’s of energy to the ground, during the day, on average, the surface gets about 3,700 Whr’s/day, that’s about 1%.
Third, at sunset it cools 3-5F/hour, and it keeps cooling till sunrise where on average it’s cooled slightly more than it warmed. It also cools at a very high rate, until temps get near dew point, where the cooling slows. At no point even if Co2 has GHG effects, does it interfere with night time cooling. This is the same reason dry deserts can cool 40F overnight, as opposed to the global average of about 18F. Is Co2 not well mixed over deserts?
This is not to say, temps have not gone up, just that if it is warmer during the day, it still cools off entirely as the days grow longer.
Water vapor controls temps, co2 is insignificant, which is why there’s no evidence of it in the surface data unless you make it up.
Greenhouse gases do not cause “heat to slowly accumulate in the atmosphere”.
Theoretically, they can be considered to act as a delay line and slow down the escape of photons of certain energy levels that are emitted from the Earth’s surface to space, that is an entirely different process altogether.
The atmosphere as such has relatively little ability to accumulate “heat”, as you would be aware if you got out more.
As to what I’m doing here, that is based on a lifetime of using the physics, thermodynamics and statistical mathematics that apply to most/all processes that occur within the Earth’s atmosphere, and I may ad, that career has been sufficiently lucrative to ensure my comfortable retirement.
So I suggest you attempt to learn some thermodynamics before you bother posting your patronising drivel on science-oriented sites, you won’t embarrass yourself as much.
and much of that heat is subsequently transferred to the oceans. … – Benjamin WInchester
Every day the sun drills energy into the oceans. It heads for the atmosphere, and then to space.
Describe what you mean by “transferred to the oceans”.
Yeah, probably I shouldn’t have said “subsequently”. The oceans warm at the same time at the atmosphere – however, the atmosphere’s temperature will rise more quickly, because it has a smaller heat capacity.
Both the oceans and the atmosphere warm, as a warming lower atmosphere means that the oceans will retain more heat.
Micro:
This comment doesn’t even make sense. If it’s still at the speed of light, it can’t be slowing. “Slowing” means that the speed decreases. The speed of light is the fastest possible speed, which means it certainly hasn’t slowed down.
After a CO2 molecule absorbs some radiation, there’s a delay until it re-emits that radiation. And if the energy is transferred to another molecule first (as it usually is), then you have to also wait for re-excitation of the CO2 molecule. And then on top of that, the radiation can be re-emitted in any direction (e.g., ~half of the time the re-radiation will be back towards the ground).
I can address your other points, but we should probably agree on the basics, first.
Catweazle:
I have three different college / graduate textbooks on thermodynamics sitting on my shelf. If you want to make some scientific claims that can be verified or checked against scientific textbooks, go ahead. We’ll get farther by focusing on the science and scientific claims, rather than waving our e-peens around. (Yes, yes, I’m sure yours is very big. Now can we get back to the science?)
When heat loss is slowed in a pseudostatic system, the system warms up. So, yes, greenhouse gases like CO2 do indeed cause heat to accumulate in the atmosphere, and by exactly the mechanism you specified: they slow down the escape of photons of certain wavelengths.
The index of refraction is due to slowing of the speed of light in that medium, it slows because some of the photons interact with the atoms in the medium. And while you are correct that some photons get thermalized, and get re-emitted, all of that happens at the speed of light (the photons zipping around) in that medium (air with a mix of water and co2, and …..).
The reason for the complaints is this is a very odd way of describing what happens.
The system doesn’t warm up, it’s rate of cooling is slower (why I’ve spent 8 years now looking for that slow down). Now technically at 4 hours in, one system cooling at one rate, and a second one cooling at a slower rate, the second one would be warmer, but not because it was warmed by the lower cooling rate.
But I can see why some would argue this point for the next 20 year, until AGW has been so thoroughly debunked only the homeless will be shouting about it at the park in a snow storm.
Ben consider this is a intervention.
“I have three different college / graduate textbooks on thermodynamics sitting on my shelf.”
Then perhaps you ought to read them.
Even better, try to understand them.
The atmosphere does not “gradually store heat” as a result of the “greenhouse effect”.
If you can’t grasp that, there is no point whatsoever in conducting any form of scientific debate with you.
Too little, too late. Shoulda intervened before I got interested in science back in middle school, much less before I went and got too many degrees in it.
O…. kay….
Well, we can say that greenhouse gases changes the index of refraction in these wavelengths. By changing the optical depth, it effectively changes the speed of light in the medium.
And again, on top of that, the photons get thermalized, which slows down the loss of heat waaaaay more.
Eh? It’s pretty normal in the scientific community. If the thermal energy of a system is increasing, the system is warming up. It’s the same thing.
Was it actually difficult to understand? “Warming up” doesn’t imply that the heat is internally generated, just that the heat (thermal energy) is increasing.
Have you heard of the Principle of Charity?
But that’s just it, it isn’t increasing.
You have 2 buckets full of water, you lift them up, both are leaking, one just leaks twice as fast as the other, in no way is it obvious that the second one’s water is increasing compared to the first, water is pouring on both your feet.
So greenhouse gases do not cause the temperature of the atmosphere to rise? They don’t slow the loss of thermal energy to space?
I must be misunderstanding you, because that’s inconsistent with what we’ve talked about so far (re: absorption, thermalization and re-emission), and it’s also inconsistent with physics.
I can put it another way. Say you have a lake. Water is flowing in via one stream at 10 cf/s, and out via another stream at 10 cf/s.
Say we partially dam the outgoing stream, so that the outflow of the lake is decreased to 5 cf/s.
Does the amount of water in the lake increase, decrease, or remain the same?
No (technically my answer is it does not slow cooling, but might warm the day a fraction of a degree)
Yes. It’s just not by enough to matter.
That example is too contrived, and I’m not 3.
It’s more like you get a delivery of about 3,700 gallons a day, but only during the day (say pumped by solar power full blast).
But it flows out 24×7, it flows out at about 200 gallons per hour until 3rd shift comes in and slows the flow down while they clean up, but pick a rate that depending on the time of year gets the total outgoing flow to be 3,700 +/-50 gallons before the pumps start back up with the sun.
The third shift in this vignette, is a pseudonym for water vapor as dew point.
Nightly cooling is very non-linear, and it’s controlled by water vapor, as demonstrated by the tropics, as opposed to Co2 which is demonstrated by deserts.
And yes I suppose you could argue I just used the example of it increasing in my argument, to which I’ll point out that could be argued for decades.
When the sun goes down, there is a defined quantity of energy in the system at the surface, and after about 6 or 7 pm, the systems energy starts dropping, and it doesn’t stop until the sun comes up the next morning, unless weather and clouds interferes.
Hmmmm, I guess I disagreed with myself in back to back sentences.
It reduces cooling by 3W/m-2 to a system that’s already losing 100-150W/m-2 until air temps near dew point, when it slows to about 25-50W/m-2. By the time the slow down occurs, all the co2 energy is gone.
Representative values.
In January, pick a house on a very cold night in North Dakota. Say it’s 15 degrees F below zero. Open all the windows; listen to the howling wind; set the thermostat to 80F. The furnace will struggle. Say the thermostat says the temp is reaching 60F, but no more. Now close the windows. Lol.
I didn’t say it did. The only usage of the phrase “gradually store heat” on this thread so far has been you. (Quote marks signify that the part in quotes is a direct quote. I didn’t say that, yet you put it in quotes. Hmm.).
Anyways. You seem more interested in waving your e-peen around and asserting your dominance than actually discussing science. So long.
micro, are you talking about just the anthropogenic CO2, or all CO2? Or all greenhouse gases?
You agree that there’d be no downwards longwave radiation w/o greenhouse gases, yah? (At least, at night – and significantly less during the day)
3 Watts is anthropogenic co2. And it’s likely greatest during the day because that’s when the surface is the warmest, and decays as the surface cools.
Nature contains the Hurst phenomenon. Random events in nature don’t evolve independently. Dependence in the form of memory and persistence is known to exist in many natural processes particularly in hydrology and surface temperature. This property in a time series causes randomness to look like the kind of patterns humans look for. The Hurst effect is evident over a range of time scales. An attempt explain these patterns in terms of external causes must show that the patterns are in excess of those that random Hurst processes can generate. Please see:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2763358
An important consideration in dealing with non Gaussian Hurst time series is that the independence assumption of OLS regression is violated and that therefore OLS trends may be spurious. Robust methods must be used in such cases. Here is an example of a robust test for trends.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2631298
These considerations imply that a decade may be too short of a period in which to look for the effect of external causes on the climate system.
More at
https://chaamjamal.wordpress.com/
It remains the clear case that no researcher has yet published a conclusive paper about how to separate natural warming from man made warming.
It therefore follows that the questions nominated for answering are ill posed. They should be written again without presumptions about greenhouse gases.
There should also be emphasis on past periods of global cooling. Sometimes exceptions to the expected can be rich in data.
Far too little is known about the deeper half of the oceans to finesse the meanings of sea level changes, even if they could be measured with acceptable accuracy. Ocean temperatures cannot likewise be measured with adequate accuracy to be free of problems for the purposes expressed.
It is disappointing that these somewhat important matters are swept under the carpet. Perhaps the next generation of senior climate scientists will finally start to perform acceptably.
Geoff.
“how to separate natural warming from man made warming.”
Rising CO2 should increase positive NAO/AO, but AMO and Arctic warming is driven by increased negative NAO/AO, as we get through solar minima.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-3-5-6.html
Everything that exist is natural.
If not, then there is an omnipotent bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky.
One cannot separate things that are inseparable.
This is the reason for the Fermi Paradox.
ulriclyons,
Thank you, but I was expressing uncertainty while you reply in a rather dogmatic way about an uncertain topic.
Dogmatic? how rude and very inappropriate. Remain uncertain then if you so choose.
Geoff wrote: “It remains the clear case that no researcher has yet published a conclusive paper about how to separate natural warming from man made warming.”
There are two forms of “natural warming”. One could re-phrase your statement more accurately. Can we separate anthropogenically-forced warming from naturally-forced warming (volcanos, solar, and ?) and from unforced (internal) variability (ENSO and other chaotic fluctuations in heat exchange, probably mostly between the surface and deep ocean)?
To the extent that we can accurately quantify natural and anthropogenic forcing, we CAN separate forced warming into natural and anthropogenic components. For the most part, the largest volcanos have an impact for only about 5-10 years and therefore their forcing and temperature change can be subtracted from the record with acceptable accuracy. The biggest estimate for maximum variability in solar forcing based on sun-spots and other proxies is about 1 W/m2 (4 W/m2 of TSI). That makes today’s anthropogenic forcing of 2+ W/m2 bigger than any “natural” forcing. End of century anthropogenic forcings of 4.5, 6.0 or 8.5 W/m2 (mostly CO2) appear to dwarf the biggest natural forcing.
One can get some idea about unforced variability from the period before anthropogenic forcing began. “Orbital forcing” develops over many millennia, so we can look at periods of up to several millennia to observe a combination of naturally-forced and unforced variability. Looking at ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica and other proxies, global swings of about 1 K are precedented and some or most of these swing may be due to solar forcing. For example, the Maunder and Dalton minima correlative with the worst of the LIA, but don’t appear to account for all of the cooling.
If we assign all warming during the instrumental period to anthropogenic and natural forcing in energy balance models ECS appears to be between 1.5 and 2 degC. I can certainly see half of 20th century warming being due to unforced variability and ECS being as low as 0.75 to 1 degC or an equal amount of warming lost to unforced variability and ECS being 2.2-3.0 degC.
“and from unforced (internal) variability (ENSO”
ENSO is a negative feedback to indirect solar and not merely ‘internal’. With El Nino episodes resulting from slow solar wind speed periods, such as around a year after every sunspot minimum, and a doubling of El Nino episode frequency though the coldest phase of the Dalton Minimum.
Hi Arch, I use the word ‘particularities’ to indicate a range of phenomena that can only be apprehended when you look closely at the data, For example, the minimum and the maximum temperature separately. Even better, if you are trying to assess a heat load then look at the area under the curve above a suitable cut off temperature. You ask questions like which month of the year shows the greatest variation in temperature in this latitude band or location? What’s the variation in the maximum and separately the minimum.
I am not referring to dust particles, navel fluff or little particles that you see in a band of bright light entering a dark room.
I have the answers to all of your min/max temperature questions. And if I don’t already have it, and I like it, I’ll add it to the data I’m already generating.
I’ve got a few graphs, and some details on what I’m going here
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/evidence-against-warming-from-carbon-dioxide/
But all of the reports I’ve built are at the source forge url on that page, in the reports folder.
I have min and max trends by continent, lat band, 1×1 cell, daily and annual change. I generate data, station reports, and a number of different tables depending on type of report.
It’s all data, no filler, based on NCDC’s Global Summary of Days data set.
I also look at the warming/cooling cycle from min temp to tomorrows min temp, not a 24 hour clock day. This allows me to compare warming to cooling, curiously it cools slightly more at night than it warms during the day (which I think I can explain).
Frank,
Your hypothesis would need to cope with measurement uncertainty. I do not think it is presently possible to measure single digit watt per sq metre, let alone tenths of these. Look at the various correction made to different satellites to get a TOA balance. The corrections were several times larger than the effect being sought through the residual after subtracting teo large numbers.
I have often noted the violation of basic principles for the measurement, classification, estimation and expression of errors and their propagation through systems.
If people started to use formal error schemes such as those on the French BIPM site, a lot of climate work would move from being regarded as accepted, to bring rather uncertain.
As is now the case when attempts are made for natural and mad made effects to be separated. It is so bad that it approaches the comical?.
Thank you for the encouraging news that the US National Academy of Sciences is perhaps willing to admit natural climate variability. This once-distinguished of body of scientists have exactly one month to decide whether to finally admit or to deny again before the International London GeoEthics Conference on Climate Change at 11:30 am on 8 SEPT 2016, that Sun’s pulsar core has primary control of Earth’s climate and human destiny.
Here is the complete Conference program:
https://geoethic.com/london-conference-2016/
“Natural climate variability arises from two different sources: (1) internal variability from interactions among components of the climate system, for example, between the ocean and the atmosphere, and (2) natural external forcings, such as variations in the amount of radiation from the Sun.”
Unless the natural variability is largely driven by indirect solar forcings and not internal.
“The connection between Arctic sea ice loss and mid-latitude weather, and the consequential regional effects;”
Both negative NAO/AO driven, one cannot imply that the sea ice loss is driving mid-latitude weather patterns.
“Although the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) seems to drive Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), what drives NAO multi-decadal variability?”
The Sun, at the scale of weekly weather.
“What is missing from the report….. millennial variability……”
It’s always easier to grasp systems when focusing on the forest instead of the trees. I wonder how much further along our knowledge would have been if a few of these kinds of workshops, including addressing millennial variability, had been held in the 1970s. But it is a start. There is hope.
Oh the horror… Paleoclimatology did not exist before 2000.
Did I use that word, numbnuts? People actually had brains before 1979. There were methods for evaluating the efficacy of the historical perspective before the current gang of disinformation.
… Hans Oeschger was deeply troubled by the potential of an increased greenhouse effect caused by the steady increase of atmospheric CO2. He said: “The worst for me would be, if there were serious changes in the next 5 to 10 years and we scientists are helpless and did not have the courage to point at these dangerous developments early.” …
THE Hans Oeschger of the Oeschger Braunschweiger fame?
And why entitle specifically decadal variability? In the spectrum, centennial and millenial fluctuations appear even larger.
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/TemperatureVarianceSpectrum.png
And the limit of prediction has improved since this chart, but not by very much:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/ClimateTimescales.png
2100 is roughly 8 decades away.
Good, report back then.
Recognition of the importance of variability is progress, and a big change from 10 or 15 years ago. Explicit acknowledgement of the warming of the mid 1970’s to 1998 as not representative of the long term trend is contrary to the consensus view from a decade ago, where people like Hansen were suggesting that rate of warming was perfectly consistent with rather extreme model projected warming. It is now clear that neither the mid 1970’s to 1998 nor 1998 to 2014 (‘the pause’) periods reflected the underlying long term trend. Model adjustment (AKA tuning) to reflect this underlying trend has not yet taken place; the stubborn retention of assumed large aerosol effects and parameterizations in which give more positive feedbacks in GCM’s remain consistent with the earlier rapid warming, but not with the longer term trend. We might hope that GCM’s would improve to better reflect an improved understanding of decadal variability, but there is little evidence of that. A reasonable expectation is model projections and reality will continue to diverge. Reality will not be denied in the long term, not even by ‘state of the art’ climate modelers, but over the next decade or so the heels will probable remain dug in. Such is the nature of political advocacy.
Recognition of the importance of variability is progress, and a big change from 10 or 15 years ago.
No it’s not. Fyfe, there was a pause in warming, and Karl, there was no pause, essentially disagree on almost nothing.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/compare_1997-2015.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoYiOVQWYAA3K0d.jpg
There is of course no limit to the number of post hoc explanations. That doesn’t mean those explanations are worth much. The thing about a reasonable model is that it makes accurate predictions, not accurate hind-casts. The moving of goal posts will continue, of course, and endless excuses proffered. That won’t resolve the discrepancies with reality. When a person learns a second language they often reach a certain level of proficiency, and then stop progressing; their second language becomes ‘fossilized’…. with a permanent strong accent and permanent errors of grammar and pronunciation. You can usually still understand what they are trying to say, but their second language still sucks. Seems to me climate models suffer from some fossilization.
The thing about a reasonable model is that it makes accurate predictions, not accurate hind-casts.
See the tuning discussion.
Should be 100% on predicting the past, right?
For predicting the future, have to go back a ways and see how the models did. Not so good:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/HANSEN_1979_2015.png
The models make no attempt to time natural variability, so 2013 is for squares.
Are such accelerations and slowdowns predictable?
The current research is suggesting slowdowns will vanish and accelerations, like the one in which we currently find ourselves, will be big boosters of one-world socialism.
“one world socialism’
Yes, that has always been the point of the advocacy.
“big boosters of one-world socialism”
Once that has been achieved open discussions like those present on these blogs will be suppressed and violators punished.
The research did not suggest any slowdown until it happened. Now it has other suggestions. Nothing wrong with it; that how science works; we learn a little more every time – but don’t panic at a suggestion. I wonder what are error bounds of that suggestive current research.
Actually the research, which was pretty extensive, suggested it would approximately zero out, and the question now is, will be that lucky?
Nah, the research already showed that slowdowns on 5-20 year timescales could happen; that variability over these timespans could be significant. This is why “climate” has canonically been defined as over ~30-year periods.
This is also why climate scientists mostly just *yawn*ed at the whole affair. Still, some of ’em seized the opportunity and looked into the causes of this particular slowdown. The results? That it was a mixture of internal variability and variability in the forcings. Nothing to do with negating CO2’s effects, unfortunately.
JCH,
+3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745… You deserve a piece of pi for interjecting some humor into this buffet of reheated, stale hash.
Some readers may be interested in Geophysical Monograph 112 of the AGU, Mechanisms of Global Climate Change at Millennial Time Scales, 1999.
It’s a little dated but remains interesting because the authors describe work in progress, which may give some leads to follow up.
I have taken down my copy from the bookshelf and will use it to explore what the authors have done since 1999.
Most of the policy debate surrounding the actions needed to mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change has been framed by observations of the past 150 years as well as climate and sea-level projections for the twenty-first century. The focus on this 250-year window, however, obscures some of the most profound problems associated with climate change. Here, we argue that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a period during which the overwhelming majority of human-caused carbon emissions are likely to occur, need to be placed into a long-term context that includes the past 20 millennia, when the last Ice Age ended and human civilization developed, and the next ten millennia, over which time the projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change will grow and persist. This long-term perspective illustrates that policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies — not just for this century, but for the next ten millennia and beyond. …
A second important implication emerging from our results is
that to avoid severe impacts, there is a need for policies that lead to
a new global energy system that has net-zero or net-negative CO
2 emissions, and not simply for policies aimed at near-term emissions reductions. As discussed above, it is clear that peak warming and peak sea-level rise depend on cumulative CO2 emissions, and that a marginal reduction in emissions is insufficient to prevent future damages.
“… policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies — not just for this century, but for the next ten millennia and beyond. …”
I expect both the risible arrogance and the extreme naiveté in this statement is lost on the authors….. and on you.
He suggested looking at the work of the authors since 1999. I found a recent paper by Peter U. Clark.
You don’t like it. What a surprise. So if what was missing from the conference was instead at the conference, you arrogant ____ would still be unhappy… and no, that is not lost on me.
“This long-term perspective illustrates that policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies…”
Yawn…
Utter drivel.
Mankind can no more significantly alter the climate than significantly alter the time the Sun rises and sets.
Within a decade – two at the most – the whole CAGW scenario will be regarded with the same contempt with which we regard Lysenko’s theories or Hitler’s attempts to rubbish Einstein’s theories, and those who espoused them will find their future credibility seriously damaged.
Y’know, I’ve been hearing the same thing from creationists since the 1990s, and yet, the Theory of Evolution is still around, and stronger than ever.
Given that the science of AGW is nearly a century old and still quite alive and kickin’, I’m going to bed on the mainstream scientists on this one.
IMO you’ll lose. We’re not talking about “the Theory of Evolution”, we’re talking (by analogy) about the adaptationist “programme”. Well guess what? We’ve got Evo-Devo now. And growing evidence for homeotic mutationism. Creationism had nothing to do with it.
The “nearly a century old” AGW is obsolete, just like adapatationism.
The key underlying assumption could as well have been that the Earth is headed for cooling 50 to 100 years hence, interrupted in the latter half of the 20th century by a modest warming trend.
Many participants supported the notion that, because 93 percent of the excess heat from GHGs is stored in the ocean …
We can’t find it where we’ve looked so it must be where we haven’t looked.
No, we have sensors in the oceans. The 93% number is based on measurements.
Actually the 93% number is based on very crude statistical models. There is no sensor that measures total ocean heat content. These estimates are nothing more than opinion polls, where the sensors’ opinions are a tiny convenience sample of the population. Not to be trusted, as with all opinion polls.
Huh? How is measuring the temperature at a point (or, really, millions of points) in the ocean equivalent to asking someone their opinion?
One is actual data from the real world. The other is just an opinion.
…or, are you really saying that unless we can measure the temperature of every point in the ocean, we can’t measure changes in heat content? That’d just be plain absurd.
Benjamin Winchester wrote, “No, we have sensors in the oceans. The 93% number is based on measurements.”
(my bold)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mystery-of-ocean-heat-deepens-as-climate-changes/
There are no reliable measurements of deep ocean temperature.
roving broker, i think of trenberth’s deep ocean warming as a case of “be careful what you ask for because you just might get it” for the agw crowd… If the ocean “ate” the warming over the last two decades, then there is no reason to think that the ocean doesn’t “eat” the warming ALL the time. If OHC is the proper metric to use with agw, then surface temps may be meaningless as far as agw is concerned. (and perhaps human activities are having little to no impact on surface temps) Now, i also think the logic behind trenberth’s deep ocean warming is sound. The ocean contains a temperature gradient. If the sst is raised and maintained at a certain temperature, then the ocean keeps warming until a new gradient (or equilibrium) is established. Trenberth, i believe, also has a mechanism for his deep ocean warming via walker circulation. Wind blows relatively warm surface waters to the western pacific where they pile up and consequentially sink. (and visa versa in the eastern pacific where cooler waters upwell from the deep) It shouldn’t be a mystery to us that the ocean acts as a heat sink. Just how much of a heat sink it actually is may well determine the validity of agw theory…
p.s. nice comment, keep up the good work…
We don’t have great temperature measurements of the abyssal oceans, no. But then, they’d have to be cooling substantially to drop that “93%” very far.
We do have measurements that show that the deep oceans turn over very slowly. And we also know that thermal conductivity of seawater is pretty low – it takes a long time for heat to diffuse down from the surface. Combine that with the sparse measurements we do have, and we see what we expect: little changes in the deep oceans.
Yah, that’s ENSO for you. But that doesn’t affect the deep ocean much; even during a strong La Nina, the thermocline only goes down to a few hundred meters. And we have decent measurements down to about 2,000 meters.
The truth is, there’s not really any “missing heat” any more. That comment was made by Trenberth nearly 20 years ago, when we had much worse temperature measurements of the oceans. These days, there’s not really anywhere for heat to hide.
And.. it’s not. The oceans have been heating over the last 20 years.
“And.. it’s not. The oceans have been heating over the last 20 years.”
That’s my point… As surface temps have stagnated the ocean continues to warm. Thus we don’t really know how much warming from CO2 affects surface temps.
afonzarelli,
It does. There’s no reason to suggest that it does it at a constant rate, and numerous reasons to suggest variable rates … some of which you yourself detail.
We’ve got more than two decades of instrumental OHC and surface temperature data. And then there’s the paleo stuff.
BW asks this: “How is measuring the temperature at a point (or, really, millions of points) in the ocean equivalent to asking someone their opinion? One is actual data from the real world. The other is just an opinion.”
Simple, in the poll the opinion is the fact, assuming they answer truly. Trump versus Clinton for example. We sample the opinions to estimate the totality of opinions. In the ocean case the totality is the global average heat content. Your millions of temp readings are as nothing compared to the number of points in the oceans. It is a sparse convenience sample, which makes it a crude estimate at best. The science of statistical sampling goes into this in great detail, especially for polling, but the climate community ignores this fundamental issue.
I tried this argument on, and it didn’t make it past my own self-skepticism.
Let’s divide “millions of temp readings” and “the number of points in the oceans” into two classes:
• Those above the thermocline that forms the bottom of the wind-driven mixing layer, and…
• those below it.
Those above the mentioned layer will be in some sort of (pseudo-) equilibrium with the surface, and thus with the atmosphere. Thus, interpolations may be made driven by surface temperature.
Those below it are a more interesting subject, but they also are driven, in this case by recovery forces acting along isopycnal surfaces.
As a result of these forces, it’s a plausible assumption (but needs proving) that a widespread sparse network of depth/temperature reading could be interpolated based on assuming that sharp discontinuities would be quickly resolved.
After thinking about it, I decided not to waste my time pursuing this approach, although it’s certainly possible that the requisite experimental research has been skipped. I’ve seen it before.
Trenberth told physicsworld.com that the discrepancy probably lies in the environment’s largest heat reservoir. “I would say that the missing heat is mainly in the ocean,” he argues.
He’s talking about below 700 meters, which is often referred to as the deep ocean. He’s not talking about the abyssal ocean.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/images/465304a-f1.2.jpg
Longer trends (50 years or more) in observed global mean surface temperature (GMST) in the recent century largely reflect increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
they love my crayons!!!
And how about a 13,000 year trend! No doubt left at all…
A 13000-year trend would be mildly interesting… maybe… or maybe not.
Amounts to saying what every man and his dog already knew and presenting it as a recent realisation (from some “frontier”?).
Then they say there’s lots they dunno, which we (and our dogs) already knew.
Then, to stay out of trouble, they light a candle or two to Goddess Gaia in the Church of AGW.
My God it’ll be good when there are no more climate mullahs and we are all released from this climate dhimmitude which infects every institution and transaction. Can’t even have a cheesy Olympic ceremony without having to roll out the green prayer mats.
Love it!
One-world socialism… as Claytie Wheat said, “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it”
I’m guessing you don’t have a wife or a daughter.
You need to concentrate on convincing the mullahs and their flocks about the merits of one-world socialism. People who support democracy are for you a much smaller problem.
Most definitely do, and I voted against that pile…
Way OT, but reading about the Electoral College I came across:
Madison argued against “an interested and overbearing majority” and the “mischiefs of faction” in an electoral system. He defined a faction as “a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
One can spin this, but I couldn’t help but think of global warming zealots in this context. A faction impassioned by imaginary disaster driving the economy to indulge their misguided anxieties.
Have you ever considered A One-world Theocratic Dictatorship… it’s time to get your free ‘get out of jail, Free’ gift today!
Was I ever a member of the silent majority? Lord no. Am I a zealot? No time for it. I think you’re reading about yourselves.
Thanks to America’s unbridled release of CO2, parts of Florida will shortly face major flooding from persistent tropical downpours over the next day or two, causing helter-skelter and increasing unrest among the already ungovernable masses in blue cities across the country that have been drawn to mutiny against the evils of capitalism.
Something altered the minimum temperature for the band of land stations from 20 to 30 N Latitude in 97 or 98 https://micro6500blog.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/latband_n20-30_sensitivity.png?w=696&h=475
but most of the rest of the planet doesn’t (30-40N has it as well but its not as sharply defined).
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/measuring-surface-climate-sensitivity/
Published 5 days ago…
Scientific narratives overwhelmingly communicate anthropogenic climate change as a gradual process. As part of those narratives, the predictable but uncertain signal of climate change is distinct from the unpredictable noise of climate variability (Jones et al., 2013). Changing climatic means are portrayed as smooth curves, contributing to a narrative of gradual change that feeds into d
ecision making for both adaptation and mitigation – forming the gradualist narrative (Figure 1). Decision makers therefore assume that climate‐related
risks change gradually and are mediated by climate variability.
At JCH’s link:
“The strong values invested in the signal to noise model for assessing a variable under change. The value of the signal is emphasized as the component of greatest interest and the noise component of the least interest. The value of prediction adds to this investment, with the signal being predictable and noise assumed to be unpredictable.”
Noise is bad versus noise is the system. – Sapolsky
Jones uses the term, Gradualists, something like small steady changes. Illustrated by trendlines, and a predictable signal. Let’s sort the wheat from the chaff to see what we have?
“However, climatology has been slow to respond, despite over fifty years having elapsed since the climate system was shown to be stochastic rather than deterministic over interannual to decadal timescales and perhaps longer (e.g., Ghil, 2012). A comprehensive theory of climate variability remains to be developed (Ghil, 2012).”
Jones I think is saying, they are stuck in the past, not progressinng far with things like metastable states and regime changes, and staying in the same wheelhouse where they are more comfortable.
“This is especially relevant for the so‐called hiatus in global mean air temperature (GMT) that began 1997–98. Because climate change has been communicated as a gradual trend (even though mediated by climate variability) one major opposing argument is that if warming deviates from gradual increases in greenhouses gases, then the scientific consensus behind anthropogenic climate change is under threat…”
Are they still saying it’s gradual? Gradual with noise? Gradual with abrupt change? Perhaps what they are saying is indicated by the papers they publish. What are they saying when they say the warming will return? Is that being a gradualist?
“The detection of non‐linear change in climate time series is much more difficult than straightforward trend analysis. However, the recognition that climate change occurs in a series of steps, or abrupt changes, perhaps often associated with regime changes in decadal climate variability, requires a very different toolkit to standard climatological tools. Trend analysis remains relevant and works well as a first approximation, but the detailed detection of how the climate changes requires new approaches.”
“The presence of a stationary period and subsequent step changes in warming suggests that the climate system is buffered to small perturbations but, over time, a build‐up in internal energy can lead to an abrupt change to a new state. These changes show similar timing with known shifts in decadal regimes, suggesting that climate change is projecting onto modes of natural climate variability as proposed by Corti et al. (1999). Under this model, the heat produced by gradual radiative forcing will be absorbed into the climate system until it
responds in a non‐linear manner.”
The basin of attraction starts out with steep walls that flatten over time, finally allowing the climate ball to escape to the next attractor.
“However, the products being produced currently are not seamless. Weather forecasting is event‐based, whereas climate forecasting is trend‐based. This is largely due to the long‐standing emphasis on the statistics of signal to noise and the underlying gradualist model of change, rather than a theoretical understanding of how the climate works.”
“Explaining climate change as an episodic step and trend process in the mode of H2 turns the standard explanation on its head. Step changes following by relatively stable periods would become a description of normal climate behaviour, instead of smooth trends being modulated by climate variability.”
“Instead of those methods self‐selecting H1, recasting the narrative from gradualism to punctuated change promotes H2 over and above H1. It is more about moving methods beyond a historical and conservative legacy.”
I would not call it being stuck in the past. Right now, the gradualists are sitting in the catbird seat… the pause that never was lived just long enough to die.
Yes, the gradualists are sitting in the climate catbird seat and the policy advice catbird seat. We found another estblishment. It’s time for a climate Trump. I thought Jones was asking for changes in the research path. It was a very good link.
Jones –
Gradualism informs the bulk of the quantitative methods that describe problems and address solutions for climate change.
That is why they are in the catbird seat; they’re largely correct, and the quick death of the pause proved it.
So you want to put an abject maroon who calls the largely correct a hoax… in charge… I don’t think so.
More Jones –
However, when analysed for steps and trends, limited signs of gradual change can be found in a wide range of climate time series. Records of surface and satellite air temperature, rainfall, sea surface temperature, tide gauge measurements and ocean heat content show complex system behaviour similar to Bak (1996) sandpiles, where a system absorbs added inputs (grains of sand or incremental radiative forcing), then periodically
cascades when instability is reached. In the climate system, this instability seems to reflect preferred modes of climate variability on interannual to decadal time scales (and potentially longer). It also appears to accelerate in frequency and magnitude as forcing increases. …
Again, vanishing pauses and bigger boosters. Climate sensitivity is not low. By 2050, it’s going to be very hot. The climate system cannot organize an avoidance strategy.
More Jones –
The presence of similar patterns in climate model output suggests that this behaviour is an emergent property of the climate system. The acceleration of step changes with increasing radiative forcing is clear in analyses of mean global warming. This suggests that the physical pathways that heat energy takes within the climate system can be tracked and that the nature of these changes can be better understood. …
That is exactly Trenberth’s travesty… he has been saying the above for most of his career. I think you’re trusting the wrong people. They mocked him. They ridiculed him. They accused him of violating the 2nd law. I do not trust these people at all.
JCH:
Yes, I get that Jones was saying that regime swaps will accelerate. Forgive me, the hydrological cycle speeds up.
I am confused by your comments on Trenberth. I’ve highlighted his step change comments. I think one of his roles is as an accountant, doing what I’ll call disaster accounting. The records suck. What’s the answer? It’s a situation most CPAs would like to withdraw from.
I wasn’t referring to Trump himself. More like people to challenge the climate establishment as I think Jones wants.
“The climate system cannot organize an avoidance strategy.”
Based on my years of experience as an accountant, the North Pacific Gyre will spin up moving warm water North and cool water South. Maybe the South Pacific Gyre will join in too. There will be upwelling off the Peruvian coast and record amount of anchovies and sardines.
Yes, the gradualist are running circles around us. We have the PDO. Seemingly important to you, and important to me. Where would a gradualist place the PDO on Wyatt’s, ‘How Might Climate Work’ diagram, here:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/10/11/a-perspective-on-uncertainty-and-climate-science/
What is an established ocean curret if not communication? What did our cousins in the South send us this day? What has cousin ENSO been doing for the past 6 months? Holy moly. Calm down ENSO. Might be self organizing.
«Variability at decadal timescales is a well-known feature of the climate system. Climate models produce periods of slower and more accelerated warming … »
I doubt that this is a useful and reliable feature of the models:
« When initialized with states close to the observations, models ‘drift’ towards their imperfect climatology (an estimate of the mean climate), leading to biases in the simulations that depend on the forecast time. The time scale of the drift in the atmosphere and upper ocean is, in most cases, a few years. Biases can be largely removed using empirical techniques a posteriori. The bias correction or adjustment linearly corrects for model drift. The approach assumes that the model bias is stable over the prediction period (from 1960 onward in the CMIP5 experiment). This might not be the case if, for instance, the predicted temperature trend differs from the observed trend. It is important to note that the systematic errors illustrated here are common to both decadal prediction systems and climate-change projections. The bias adjustment itself is another important source of uncertainty in climate predictions. There may be nonlinear relationships between the mean state and the anomalies, that are neglected in linear bias adjustment techniques.»
(Ref: Contribution from Working Group I to the fifth assessment report by IPCC; 11.2.3 Prediction Quality; 11.2.3.1 Decadal Prediction Experiments )
“Although much progress is being made toward understanding decadal variability, as presented at the workshop, important questions remain, in particular in separating the contributions of each proposed driver.”
That is a political statement. The corresponding scientific statement would be: We don´t understand decadal variability, multidecadal or millennial variability and we are not able to predict decadal variability, multidecadal or millennial variability in a quantitative manner.
Nicely put. If you cannot separate the contributions then you simply do not understand what is going on.
I wish they would have given an honest answer, such as:
“We need more money to fund publication of our beliefs.”
Seperating contributions of each proposed driver?????
Bwaaaahhhhh, good luck with that….
All the permutations of ENSO, PDO, AMO, and any and all that have yet to be realized????
What a waste of resources, in the end they answer is: we really can’t do much about it anyhow….
Still waitin’ for definitive feedback on feedback…
2009/03/30 Richard Lindzen on negative feedback.
Insightful comments by Anna V and others, especially
George E Smith. March 31 at 8.00am. and more.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/
George E Smith comment cited above.
‘As a physicist (not a meteorologist I look at the problem
perhaps a bit differently from Dr Lindzen.His use of the
word “blanketing” is I think quite instructive, because
anyone can understand how blankets slow the rate of
energy loss from sleeping humans and keep us warmer
than we would otherwise be. In the climate case, the
delay in exit of the thermal (LW) radiation can be seen
as creating a blanket warming, if for no other reason,
than the simple fact that during that delay time, the sun
keeps on pouring in extra solar spectrum radiation,
which will warm things up.
I view the earth’s surface and lower atmosphere warming
in a very simple fashion. Two sources of radiation try to
heat the surface. The first and most powerful is the solar
spectrum radiation from the sun. Most of it propagates
some considerable depth in the oceans, to cause local
water heating. Some of it is absorbed in the upper
atmosphere directly and never reaches the ground; at
least as solar spectrum radiation. The other main
warming component is the long wave thermal IR
emission from the atmosphere itself. This of course is
a re-emission of energy which got them from some
where else, either as direct solar heating, or from
surface emitted longwave IR, which is usually thought
of as the green house component.
The earth’s surface; particularly the ocean treats the
short and long components quite differently; and here
my view might not agree with Prof Lindzen’s. As I see it,
the long wave returning from the atmosphere is totally
absorbed in the top 10 microns or so of the ocean
surface or any water on land as well. That must result
in very localized warming of the water surface, and
lead to rather prompt evaporation of water vapor into
the atmosphere. And that I see as a huge energy pump
in the form of latent heat of evaporation around 545 cal/
gm, which gets carried aloft by the water vapor in
convective currents and eventually lost to space from
the upper atmosphere. Bottom line is I don’t see any
large fraction of that returned long wave energy from
the atmosphere being propagated into ocean depths
and “Stored” in the ocean. And I also see it as the prime
source of the water vapor feedback that ultimately leads
to precipitation and the obligatory extra clouds that
come with precipitation; and that I see as the direct
source of Dr Lindzen’s negative feedback; and
although the details may be more complex, it seems
to me that the mechanism is irrefutable; specially in
light of the paper of Wentz et al in SCIENCE July 7
2007; “How Much more Rain will Global Warming
bring?”
As to the fate of the solar spectrum energy
propagated into the ocean many metres; the depth
of propagation is like the solar spectrum turned
upside down; the highest intensity spectral
components in the blue green region going deepest,
and the red and violet ends being attenuated at
shallower depths.From there I don’t see any powerful
mechanisms form moving this energy significantly
deeper, to store it in the deep oceans. There will
of course be conduction in all directions; but since
ordinary sea water always has a positive temperature
coefficient of expansion down to its freezing temperature,
there must be upward convection currents established
by the solar energy warming, so the deposited solar
energy must in my view be inexorably transported
back towards the surface, and since convection
almost always trumps conduction; I don’t see a deep
ocean energy storage mechanism, other than what
ocean circulations might be set up by the local
geography.
Anyhow, I’m skeptical that there is much of a down-
ward flow of energy into the ocean; I think it is largely
returned to the surface over time,and ultimately lost to
the atmosphere or space, by surface radiation (nearly
black body) and conduction or evaporation.
As to the component of the long and short wave
radiations captured by the atmosphere, it is clear from
absorption spectroscopy that water vapor is a significant
absorber of solar spectrum radiation and CO2 is not, and
as for the long wave, water vapor once again absorbs
over a much larger spectral range than CO2, so a
doubling of CO2 is really just a drop in the bucket of
increased green house absorption, since the atmosphere
doesn’t really care which molecular species captured
the IR photon and conveyed the energy to ordinary
atmospheric gases in collisions.
So to me the concept of “climate sensitivity” is simply a
red herring. Any immediate surface warming due to a CO2
increase, sets in motion the evaporation/cloud formation/
precipitation feedback which is always strongly negative.
As I have said many times; nobody ever observed it to
warm up when a cloud passes in front of the sun; it always
cools in the shadow zone; and the fact that last night it
remained a little warmer overnight because of some high
cloud cover, is irrelevant. It still cooled down after sunset;
and in any case, that was last night’s weather; not climate.’
Thanks for that link. I also find this post by Willis Eschenbach interesting. In particular the magnitude of the rainfall evaporative cooling and the non-linearity, of the of the involved effects.
“As in Figure 5, at the hot (right hand) end of the scale, the rainfall evaporative cooling goes from about 50 to about 200 W/m2 very quickly. However, in this case it makes that change as the SST goes from about 27° to 30°. And that gives us a net cooling of about 50 W/m2 per degree … kinda dwarfs the 3-4 W/m2 per degree of water vapor based warming …”
Kind of dwarfs the 0,6 W/m^2 in net global warming as well. This should leave plenty of room for natural variability.
The confidence of IPCC, based on the highly tuned model results, seems more and more peculiar.
beththeserf,
That’s a low climate sensitivity argument which tends to put the kibosh on the “climate is always changing” red herring.
Do you happen to have any idea what happened in the aftermath of “Lindzen on negative climate feedback”?
While I agree George E Smith has wrote some insightful things, I think it’s about an equilibrium. The atmosphere is warmer for whatever cause. At each place over the ocean the difference between the atmosphere and the ocean has changed when we assume the ocean near surface hasn’t. If the water is 25 C and at the moment the air is 20 C there will be X amount of cooling. Raising the air temperature to 21 C is going to slow the transfer to the atmosphere to less than X, holding all other things constant.
An experiment might be attempted. Take identical glasses of water filled with the same amount of water at the same cool temperature. Cover half of them to limit the cooling of air at the top of the glasses. The open ones will mix the near surface air with room temperature air I assume and have warmer air above the water. We then monitor the temperature rise of the water.
Let’s say that CO2 can’t warm the oceans. I suppose that would mean neither can the GHG effect of water vapor. It would sure simplify things leaving it to the clouds albedo. And then we could use the ocean to determine overall effect of cloud albedo over the oceans.
Ragnaar,
Yes.
All other things wouldn’t remain constant, but your reasoning follows. I typically think of surface air temperature being more responsive to SST and not the other way ’round, but I don’t think that matters much for purposes of what you’re getting at.
Indeed. Or LW emitted from clouds for that matter. (See below.)
My question at this point would be: What causes the change in cloud albedo in the first place?
The consensus view of things is rather straightforward and doesn’t leave such critical unanswered questions, or rely on dubious assumptions that an increase in downward LW at the ocean surface will be immediately offset by evaporative cooling:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/Minnett_2.gif
Figure 2: The change in the skin temperature to bulk temperature difference as a function of the net longwave radiation.
Basically, net surface flux makes all the difference. SW penetrates to depth no problem, that’s the initial heating. The only way for heat to get back out is to cross the skin layer, which it mainly does via conduction since even a ~1 mm skin layer is too thick for outbound LW radiative cooling. Impede net flux across the skin layer, and heat loss from all that solar energy absorbed at depth will be reduced. Result: subsurface warming.
If you use an IR thermometer, the radiant temp of cumulus bottoms can be near air temp. That’s way more forcing than an extra 3.7W/m-2, even high haze changes radiant temp more than 3.7W/m-2.
And my argument with Ben is first there isn’t any equlibirum, and second cooling is non-linear and controled by dew point, not co2. That’s why co2 as a ghg is ineffective in our climate.
Oh and according to the tsi data I got from Dr. Leif Svalgaard, it’s varied by 6W/m-2 over the last 50 or so years.
External forcings on the climate system also arise from some human activities, such as the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols. The climate that we experience is a combination of all of these factors.
WRONG!
A fine non-scientific song and dance going on here. NSF says that decade to century variability does not exist. See my expose: http://www.cato.org/blog/nsf-climate-denial?utm_content=buffer2695b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
But the government needs decade scale variability in order to explain (away) the hiatus. So NSF et al are pouring many millions into decade scale variability while denying 50 year (dec-cen) variability.
Of course NASEM/NRC gets a piece of the AGW-biased action. Here is the sponsorship statement: “This project was supported by the US Department of Energy under contract number DESC0014286, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under contract number NNX08AB07G, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under contract number
NA14OAR4310301, and the National Science Foundation under award number AGS-1507493.” The usual suspects.
http://dandebat.dk/eng-klima7.htm
More data from the past which shows this period of warmth is NOT unique.
I am going to keep harping on this to expose how misleading the AGW enthusiast are when presenting their case to the public.
Five cornerstones from where I come from on the climate issue are as follows:
1. Past history shows this period in the climatic record is not unique.
2. Past history shows that each and every time solar enters a period of PROLONGED minimum solar activity the global temperatures have responded down. I have listed the criteria (in the past) which was last met in the period 2008-2010. With that said I think there is an excellent chance of this criteria being met presently and this time the duration could be much longer.
3. There is a GHG effect but I maintain it is more a result of the climate/environment rather then it being the cause of the climate.
4. If one looks at the climate just since 1950 -present(to take a recent period of time) and factors solar, volcanic activity, global cloud cover and ENSO versus resultant temperature changes one will find a very strong correlation.
5. Temperature data of late must be met with suspicion. I maintain satellite temperature data is the only valid temperature data.
Remember if global cloud coverage should increase and snow coverage/sea ice coverage should increase in response to prolonged minimum solar conditions that would accomplish the albedo to increase. Even a .5% to 1% increase would wipe out all of the recent warming.
Albebo is hard to change and at the same time it takes very little change in it to have climatic effects.
It is similar to Ice Age conditions versus Inter-Glacial conditions; hard to go from one regime to the other but at the same time the change required is very minimal. It is a balancing act which most of the time is in balance but every so often factors conspire to throw it out of balance which we know when we look at the climatic history of the earth.
CLIMATIC HISTORY – which is totally being ignored by the AGW movement has to be kept in the forefront and I am going to do that each and every time I combat their notion that this period of time in the climate is somehow unique.
Decadal is much to short a time period with so much climate noise that it is almost impossible to ascertain what is causing what.
Instead of focusing on this I choose to focus on the climatic history of the last 8000 years which shows beyond a doubt that this period of time in the climate(today) is in NO way unique and that the GHG effect is non existent.
This again being ignored by the AGW movement.
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo336/lectures/sec5/holocene.html
This says it all AGW is not causing some unique period of climate change, nor will it going forward.
Salvatore del Prete ,
That’s a good simple summary. Thank you.
It’s worth highlighting that warm period were better for humanity and cold period were worse. It states that the Holocene Maximum was around 2C warmer. So, what is the problem with warming?
It might be interesting to compare biosphere productivity in warm and cold climates. We could compare productivity of the Antarctica and the tropics by comparing the density of carbon tied up in the biosphere. This would give an indication of the trend (most have a sense of the trend without having to do measurements and statistics).
Statements like “Longer trends (50 years or more) in observed global mean surface temperature (GMST) in the recent century largely reflect increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.” are more examples of Trenberth’s efforts to reverse the null hypothesis. Their is scant evidence if any, that GHGs affect temperatuers before 1950.
http://landscapesandcycles.net/trenberth-reverses-null-hypothesis-for-droughts.html
Within the last decade the consensus was any GHG effect was only significant from 1950 onwards. Howver there are abundant examples across the globe from instrumental data, tree rings and ice cores that there was similar peak in warming around the 30s and 40s and deemed natural. Over the last decade those earlier peak temperatures have been homogenized and lowered so now they talk about a century of GHG warming and accordingly only address natural oscillations occurring in the recent 50 years.
It appears they are suggesting the Little Ice Age was the good ol days with the perfect temperature before humans interfered. LOL
EXACTLY !
Jim more examples if one goes back further in time.
Let’s post an old question “Where was the Garden of Eden?” a little differently: “When was the Garden of Eden?” Was it an Ice Age, or was it a warm age?
Last year I wrote an article published here concerning natural variability , expressed in decadal and fifty year periods. This examined primarily CET but set it against the wider global picture.
https://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
There is extraordinary decadal variation and it is evident that many novel proxies, such as trees and corals are a very coarse sieve through which annual, decadal and even fifty year periods, fall through. In other words the novel proxies often don’t record even the most Extreme real word periods.
Tonyb
“There is extraordinary decadal variation and it is evident that many novel proxies, such as trees and corals are a very coarse sieve through which annual, decadal and even fifty year periods, fall through. In other words the novel proxies often don’t record even the most Extreme real word periods.”
Logic fail.
CET gets you the weather at a single location.
It may or may not record extremes at that location. Tendencies?
perhaps. Extremes, probably not as you need good precision to examine
tail events.
There is no reason to suspect that extremes at CET will be matched in other locations.. In fact quite the opposite.
Mosher.
It doesn’t matter if CO2 concentration increases if overall impacts are net beneficial or not significantly negative. And you’ve not been able to present any convincing evidence that the impacts would be significantly negative.
“Decadal Climate Variability?”
Variability in What?
1. A global temperature that folks argue doesnt exist? variability in something that doesnt exist? thats funny
2. variability in SST? which folks argue doesnt have any valid measurements before 1950? variability in that? prove the variability
isnt just an artifact of changes in measurement techniques and poor sampling
3. Variability in UAH or RSS? heck skeptics argue there is no change there.
4. Variability in SAT? any skeptics actually accept SAT records? I thought they were all hoaxed? “Decadal Hoax Variability?”
5. Variability in proxies? Proxies of what? a global temperature that doesnt exist? And how many proxies? heck we hear that 10K or 40K thermometers is not enough, what can 100 proxies tell you about variability?
Put another way, if skeptics are correct in all their attacks on climate records, then they have really destroyed the underpinnings of any belief in
decadal variability.
Hi mosh
Glad to see that you appear to be fully recovered from your unexpected illness.
Tonyb
Alas, his chronic illness of miscomprehending/misrepresenting critical scientific issues remains uncured..
not quite yet out of the woods.. but i’m awake.
Get well soon – we need you back to argue with.
Well, there goes the theory the appendix is source of all comedy…
“A miracle just happened.” -a la Our Gav.
Andrew
Shhhhh, Steven. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
The immature, conjectural status of “climate science” is epitomized by the flat assertion that
followed by admission that
In any other field, patently unresolved questions about
would prevent any unequivocal claim about man-made effects.
Decadal variability is hard to predict, but the good thing about it is that it is mostly self-canceling, so when you look at the 30-year temperature it doesn’t show the 15-year pause or the rapid 15-year rise that preceded it because they canceled each other. The 30-year trend is very steady, and is a way to isolate the long-term non-canceled forced trends from the decadal variability.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:120/mean:240/plot/gistemp/from:1985/trend:240
Think outside the box. Why 30 years? Think 13,000 years.
You have 13,000 years of annual data? Go for it.
“Decadal variability is hard to predict, but the good thing about it is that it is mostly self-canceling”
That’s not what the IPCC says.
They think, with some merit, that differences increase from annual to centennial scale:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/images/fig12-2.gif
Forcing changes on those scales, so that is what is expected. The best example is solar variability that has some century-scale variation which is seen in the record.
Jim D,
Actually those curves derive from unforced control runs. I’ve found interpreting what they mean somewhat confusing but I’m pretty sure TE’s interpretation isn’t correct. If you were to simply plot inter-annual/inter-decadal/inter-centennial temperature changes in models, inter-annuals are comfortably largest on a ºC/yr basis.
What I understand the plot above means is that those large short term variations are not very important for the long-term signal. In other words, they’re mostly noise, hence having low power.
Inter-centennial variance is so small it is effectively close to being the same as the signal, hence having high power. So, I believe TE’s plot actually demonstrates what you were saying: short-term variations largely cancel, multi-decadal trends are close to the true signal.
If you were to simply plot inter-annual/inter-decadal/inter-centennial temperature changes in models, inter-annuals are comfortably largest on a ºC/yr basis.
Yes. At the same time: 100*Centennial > 10*Decadal > 1*Annual
short-term variations largely cancel, multi-decadal trends are close to the true signal.
The true signal? Sounds like you are thinking only of one signal – that of GHGs, which is true. But all the variations for all the periodicities are also true, and any given anomaly may be contributed to by various components being in or out of phase.
“Thus, the whole climate system must be regarded as continuously evolving with parts of the system leading and others lagging in time. The highly nonlinear interactions between the subsystems tend to occur on many time and space scales. Therefore, the subsystems of the climate system are not always in equilibrium with each other, and not even in internal equilibrium.”
‘The Physics of Climate’ ( Peixoto and Oort )
An example of what is being talked about in the [link] in the earlier post… a fallacy?
–i.e., an example of a red herring and a wild goose chase, Chekhov’s gun,
Chewbacca defense, decoy, false flag, being led down the garden path, a MacGuffin, sidetrack, snipe hunt…a fool’s errand.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
There is no science in it. Just propaganda. Goebbels style.
Well Me oh My just look at this:
‘participants discussed the limitations of using Global Mean Surface Temperature as the primary metric of global climate change.’
If the participants had a genuine interest in discerning cause and effect you would begin by checking the data for one hemisphere against the other wouldn’t you? If the mode of causation that is proposed is greenhouse gases in the atmosphere…….I mean, really, its common atmosphere, very mobile, very well mixed in terms of its constituents and there should be some degree of overlap, some semblance of similarity.
In truth what they want is something that goes up and up without any embarrassing pauses or declines.
It’s not about the science at all. This is not a debate. The question will not be resolved by recourse to observation and argument. Sweet reason is not involved.
Pingback: C’è un rumore assordante nel clima | Climatemonitor
To investigate the origins of natural climate change one looks at particularities. The Earth does not warm uniformly across space and in time. Infrared absorbers of anthropogenic origin are well mixed. But two infrared absorbers of natural origin are not well mixed. These are ozone and water vapour. The former varies in its concentration in the vertical and according to season with wide swings in its concentration on all time scales. It is a trace gas that informs us about the density of particular parcels of air. Its ability to heat the air is pressure dependent.
There are parts of the Earth where the temperature today is no different to what it was 100 years ago. There are some parts of the Earth where the temperature in summer is substantially cooler than it was 100 years ago.
Here is a list of particularities that a person truly interested in discovering the source of natural climate change should find interesting. The devil is in the detail. The ‘global average surface temperature’ is not in this list. It is not a statistic that a forensic investigator would find at all interesting.
1. The daily and monthly range of temperature increases with altitude up to about 50 hPa. This tells us that the atmosphere is not simply heated from the surface of the Earth and that a greenhouse gas that is not well mixed is likely responsible for this situation. It’s not water vapour because it tends to stay close to the surface. The height of the tropopause steps down twice between the equator and the pole creating great instability.
2. Surface pressure is higher in low and mid latitudes that high latitudes so that the air moves in a swirling circulation that is driven faster towards the poles than it is at the equator and in the same direction as the Earth. So, there is super-rotation involved. The rate of super-rotation varies over time and the more so at higher altitudes near the poles. Air of equatorial origin ends up at the pole. That equatorial air is colder and denser than polar air as it arrives above the polar tropopause.
3. The polar tropopause ascends to the upper stratosphere in winter due to the descent of very cold air from the mesosphere.
4. Volatility in sea surface temperature on multi-decadal basis is greatest in the mid and high latitudes of the southern hemisphere where the bulk of the ocean is located and in high latitudes in winter. The biggest influence on surface temperature between the mid latitudes and the poles is the direction of the wind. The biggest swings in wind direction occur in winter.
5. There is a strong relationship between surface temperature, surface pressure, geopotential height and the temperature at particular pressure levels across the troposphere and into the stratosphere.
6. The diurnal range gets smaller in the upper stratosphere. This suggests that whether the atmosphere is sunlit or not makes little difference to its temperature.
7. The monthly range increases wherever ozone is present at more than 6ppm. So, it increases with height due to variations in the ozone content of the air.
8. The air differs in density in the horizontal. The strongest winds are found where ozone is found in the upper troposphere. Upper level troughs represent air of lower density and higher ozone content.
9. Total column ozone maps surface pressure. Gordon Dobson was not the first to observe this when he started collecting data on a systematic basis in the 1020’s.
10. On the margins of the night zone wind speed increases with elevation to the top of the atmosphere and this situation persists into spring long after the pole is fully sunlit.
11. Surface temperature shows highest variability in January and July. Between 30° south and 90° north it is most variable in January. In the remainder it most variable in July.
12. It appears that most of the variation in temperature occurs during the day rather than the night. Diurnal minimums are relatively stable. Maximums are highly unstable. A likely cause of variation in the daily maximum is a change in cloud cover.
13. Much of the variation in surface temperature appears to be related to a persistent change in the origin of the wind. This changes the equator to pole temperature gradient.
14. It appears that the rate of mixing of cold waters into warm on the eastern sides of the oceans plays a very big role in determining tropical and global temperature. This is a mixing process that changes the character of the water at the surface.
15. The Earth as a whole is warmest in July when it is furthest from the sun and solar radiation is 6% diminished.
According to what I have seen about the Vostok, ice cores over the last 420K years, the pattern we see is Temperature rise, CO2 next, Dust being the last stage of these cycles. Why is dust (particulates) last?
We see dust blowing off the coast of Africa because there’s desert there. Does the world turn to desert prior to the start of the ice ages?
That would seem to be run away warming, and yet it then turns to ice.
Edward Teller. would have called it the ‘Super Duper’ problem but the answers could be discovered… if there was proper funding.
Erl Happ
Would you expect the climate (over long time periods) would be more stable or less stable when there is no ice at the poles?
Well, as far as I can see all the change that we can actually document adequately, and that means since 1979 has been experienced under the present regime of plenty of ice at the poles. There are good reasons for the climate to vary under either regime. The electromagnetic influences that come into play over the poles under a high ozone regime in winter that give rise to a super-rotation of the atmosphere that is faster at higher latitudes and higher altitudes are externally forced.
Clouds account for most of the albedo of the Earth. Most of the Oceans have cloud cover. Land masses do not store heat like the oceans.
erl happ,
Thank you for this interesting information.
The paleoclimate records seems to suggest the climate was more stable (changed less) during the periods when there was no ice at the poles. This also seems to make sense to me because the tropics to poles temperature gradients wwre much less; e.g. about 0.82C/degree latitude now, versus 0.44C when the planets is 3C warmer and 0.25 C when it is 5 C warmer (5C warmer would get the planet back to the middle of the Earth’s temperature range over the pas 540 million years; i.e. the period when multi-cell animal life has thrived)
https://html2-f.scribdassets.com/235ko6pvuo4jol5p/images/21-975a2df8d8.png
However, I don’t know if the temperature records during warm times are as detailed and as complete over sufficiently long time periods during warm times as they are during the current ice age (i.e. when the is ice at the poles). Although we have some detailed temperature data from lake and ocean sediments, I don’t know if we have coverage over long periods as we do with the the ice core data.
Sorry if I am hard to follow. Perhaps its a dyslexic mode of thought.
Re My statement: “Now, lets us imagine that there was no circumpolar trough in the Antarctic so that atmospheric pressure in high latitudes was superior to that at the equator. The delivery of lots of heat to the tropical atmosphere would heat the air reducing surface pressure. Air would flow continuously from the coldest parts to the warmest parts of the globe and the equator to pole temperature gradient would be very steep.”
Two opposing circumstances are possible.
1 Surface pressure at equator superior to that at the pole. Air flows towards pole. Low surface temperature gradient between equator and pole because energy from the equator is moved to high latitudes.
2 Surface pressure at pole superior to that at equator. Cold air flows from pole to equator. Steep temperature gradient results. Mid latitudes become very cold. Polar ice cap increases in extent.
Option 2 requires removal of the circumpolar trough. Removal of Polar cyclones. Removal of density contrast between ozone rich and ozone poor air, no jet stream. No polar vortex. No vigorous westerly winds in the southern hemisphere to drive the anticlockwise circulation of the ocean that also moves energy from low to high latitudes.
If here were no plant life on Earth, no release of NOx from soil to carve out a relatively ozone free ‘troposphere’ then ozone would proliferate all the way to the surface. That is one circumstance in which the circumpolar front about the Antarctic continent could disappear in which case atmospheric pressure over Antarctica would be superior to that over the equator with no low pressure trough between the south pole and the equator to stop the movement of cold dese air equator-wards. A very simple convectional system would result, one cell in each hemisphere.
The basic thinking behind the modes of natural climate change that I describe, all due to change in the intensity of the circumpolar trough that surrounds Antarctica is laid out in detail here: https://reality348.wordpress.com/
I would be very happy to see parts of that material presented to a wider audience. To understand the reasoning one needs to begin with the question of why the stratosphere is warm as I do here: https://reality348.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/17-why-is-the-stratosphere-warm/
Even better perhaps is to begin with an examination of the patterns of natural climate variability as here: https://reality348.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/8-volatility-in-temperature/
erl,
Thank you for the explanations and the links. I am overwhelmed. But there is no way in the world I can devote the time to try to understand all you’ve written. I’ll have to return to my area of interest, which really is energy policy.
Hi Peter, energy policy is worth a very close focus. You will no doubt be aware of http://euanmearns.com/about-euan-mearns/
But I fear that its an even more specialized and technical area than climate studies and the man in the street is easily swayed by emotion……and journalists…just look at the ABC.
So, if you want to turn it around don’t forget to keep telling people that the Earth would be a better place if it were warmer like the places that retired types go to in the winter months.
erl happ,
Thank you. I that message more cautiously. I don’t know so I ask. It’s becoming ever more clear that the evidence for CO2 being net damaging is entirely lacking.
If you are interested in energy policy here are two of my posts from earlier this year:
Is nuclear the cheapest way to decarbonize electricity? https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/19/is-nuclear-the-cheapest-way-to-decarbonize-electricity/
Nuclear power learning rates: policy implications https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/
erl,
Here’s another you might be interested in:
Why carbon pricing will not succeed http://anglejournal.com/article/2015-11-why-carbon-pricing-will-not-succeed/
Peter, I gave your papers enough of a look to satisfy myself that you are both expert and erudite and have a very sound grasp of economics. My training is in economics and I don’t like waste.
But as a farmer I know that the extra CO2 is beneficial and I would hate to see a good thing reversed. In the South west of Western Australia rainfall seems to have fallen away by some 20% over several decades. But plant life is thriving like never before. The benefit is greatest in the arid zones. The least hospitable parts of the planet are becoming habitable and productive. Now, if they were only just a bit warmer!
So, I say, give the Indians the coal that they need to electrify the villages. Don’t worry about the Chinese building coal fired power stations. Just concentrate on limiting particulate emissions that are the cause of respiratory disease and keep the beneficial plant fertilizer coming.
The stupidity in the AGW argument is in its assumption that warming is undesirable and CO2 a ‘pollutant’. Its appeal is to those who fear change of any sort.
I shudder when I listen to those who want more ‘renewable energy’. I for one don’t want to run a power station. I can’t get the guys who installed my solar panels to return and correct a fault that is reducing output in a third of the array. I don’t like climbing on to a roof that is six metres up after falling through a skylight eighteen months ago. Without the government subsidy there is no payback. I felt bad about taking that subsidy.
If this stupidity continues I will have to join the queue for a seniors card.
erl happ,
I agree with much of this. However, we have to accept the reality: we are not going to get the CAGW alarmists to go away by telling them they are wrong. The belief is like a religion. It’s a political reality and it has to be dealt with. I propose the way to deal with it is with economically rational policy analysis and advocacy.
erl happ,
To emphasise the point that CAGW is a political reality, look at Clinton’s climate and energy policies: http://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11548354/hillary-clintons-climate-and-energy-policies-explained
Was going to buy and read the workshop report. But a $46 paperback at Amazon did not seem worth the money. Maybe that is one way warmunists supress general acknowledgement of natural variability. If the pause returns in 2017 thanks to the forming La Nina maybe they will lower the price.
According to the web-site, you can read it free, or download a free PDF by submitting your email address.
Ristvan
All one has to do is register with email and select password and a pdf can be downloaded free.
They usually ask what yu plan to use it for to establish metrics.
Lots of other climate books in that area are also free there.
Scott
“Solar Cycle Progression.” (As Of) May 22, 2016.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
Note: Solar Cycle 24 is approximately 2/3 of cycle 23.
Recent solar disk:
http://www.solarham.net/regions/map.htm
Peter, I agree with your analysis that points out that climate change involves a change in the equator to pole temperature gradient. Climate change involves a redistribution of atmospheric mass between the poles and other latitudes and therefore a change in the pressure differentials controlling the intensity of the winds that convey warm air from the tropics to the poles, manifestly across the trade wind zone and into the supporting westerly wind regime that varies the most, and on what appears to be centennial and longer time scales.
erl happ
Sorry for the delay in responding. I just saw your reply.
It seems to me that with a lesser temperature gradient from tropics to poles there’d be a tendency for less winds.
But far more significant, if we don’t have ice sheets expanding an contracting – as they do during the glacial interglacial cycles – the climate would tend to change much less. That is variability of climate would be less when the planet is warmer.
We have geological records showing that during the Carboniferous-Permian ice age, the variability of sea levels and of contraction and expansion of ice sheets was very similar to during the current (Pleistocene-Hollocene) ice age. I don’t know if there is evidence that the climate was as variable when there was not ice at the poles. I suspect not.
I am becoming more and more convinced that there is no persuasive evidence to support the CAGW belief – i.e. that global warming is a threat to human civilization. I am not even sure there is persuasive evidence that CO2 emissions will do more harm than good.
Despite asking many times, no one has yet come up with convincing evidence that CO2 emissions are harmful, let alone dangerous.
If we had no ice, sea level would be over 200 feet higher.
You miss the point, as always.
You were considering a world without ice, and so was I.
You miss the point as always. And you are attempting to divert from the point a sign of intellectual dishonesty – as you commonly do. Get on the point and make relevant comments, or go and disrupt some other discussion if you cant contribute constructively and rationally.
Point is, if even only 5% of the glacier mass melts, sea level is 10 feet higher. This is a consideration you obviously want to ignore or suppress.
Your point is totally irrelevant to the point we are discussing. Post a new comment elsewhere for people to discuss.
We are discussing this: https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/08/decadal-climate-variability/#comment-801822
Hi Peter, The temperature gradient from equator to pole is in the first instance a direct function of the rate of transfer of energy from warm to the cold zone. Surface pressure is always lower in high latitudes(especially so in the southern hemisphere). The atmosphere super-rotates in the same direction as the earth rotates, i.e. from east to west. The speed of rotation increases at higher latitudes and higher altitudes especially in the winter hemisphere. Pressure rises and falls at the poles with the ozone content of the atmosphere in high latitudes and that changes the speed of the flow. Faster flow moves more energy pole-wards reducing the temperature gradient from equator to pole. That mechanism is simple.
Ignore the three cell model. Equator to pole movement brings rainfall to high latitudes. Otherwise it would all fall in the tropics. Its obvious in the trace gas composition that this spiralling movement occurs towards the pole.
This super-rotation is very likely initiated and modified by the electromagnetic coupling of ionised and diamagnetic particles in the atmosphere that create a weak plasma, especially over the winter pole. Speed of rotation is conditioned by such factors as earths magnetic field, rate of ionisation due to cosmic rays, solar wind.
It is for this reason that the largest variations in temperature occur in the region traversed by the polar front where cold and warm air streams merge and polar cyclones are formed. The ascent zone is called the vortex. Ascent proceeds to the top of the atmosphere.
In this paradigm the atmosphere is driven from the poles rather than by heating at the equator….the latter being the current orthodoxy.
erl happ,
Thank you for this response. However, I am not clear if it is in response to my question. My question and points I made are in relation to my original question, which was:
My main point in my comment you just responded to (my assumption because this is not my area of expertise) is that:
I am, of course, asking about variability of climate over time periods of multi-decades to millennia, not weather.
Comments?
Hi Peter, I am looking at the sources of variability in climate on the decadal and centennial scales. So far as I can see there are two modes of variability. The first is the change in the equator to pole temperature gradient that is in part a response to the re-distribution of energy wrought by the atmosphere. This results from change in the surface pressure regime wrought by ozone. There is also an associated change in cloud cover. Surface temperature varies with geopotential height. That’s another way of saying it varies with the temperature of the air aloft. That varies with its ozone content. So ozone is implicated in both instances. Don’t imagine for a moment that ozone does not exist in the troposphere.6 ppm is enough to make a difference.
Albedo is the dominant factor in changing the climate on all time scales I would think. In that respect polar ice and snow is under a cloud layer with the sun at a very low angle and I don’t see it making a big difference to albedo. The primary change in albedo that is most influential occurs over the sea in mid and low latitudes where high pressure cells of relatively cloud free air circulate about the planet. Here, the sun is periodically directly overhead. That means the southern hemisphere is very important because of the amount of ocean.
Your question ‘Would you expect the climate (over long time periods) would be more stable or less stable when there is no ice at the poles?’ from my point of view looks at a result and poses a question as to whether a result of a process can be a cause of the process.
90% of the ocean has cloud overhead when seen from space. 30% of the land has cloud. The land does not store energy. The distribution of land is important in that it heats the atmosphere directly reducing cloud cover. That’s why the globe as a whole is warmest in June when the sun shines on the land masses of the northern hemisphere…..when the suns irradiance is 6% less than in January. This tells us that cloud is massively important.
So, my direct answer is to look at cloud rather than ice as the source of change.
When we look at surface temperature data its most variable in January and July and the variability is by far and away greatest in the highest latitudes in winter.
When we know the month of the year and the place where the variability is greatest we have a much better chance of working out what that source of natural variability is. Very likely it is the source of variability on all time scales, long and short.
If this does not make sense in any respect please tell me. I am not avoiding your question. I am providing the best answer that I can.
erl happ,
That is my question. I think perhaps I haven’t made it clear but I don’t know how else to ask it. I’ve tried to give background. I think we are talking from such different backgrounds that we probably can’t progress this any further.
Wyatt and Curry’s ‘Stadium Wave’ paper shows that ice contraction and expansion is an important influence. The glacial interglacial cycles and the Ghil paper http://research.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd//PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf show that the area of ice sheets and the variability of them is a very important factor.
Peter, From the introduction to the paper: ‘The global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems — atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere — each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
High theory: but complete nonsense. Abstraction back to prediction. I think that problem solving behaviour has to begin with observation. What are these modes of internal variability. What’s the range? Where and when is the range greatest? From measurement to generalization. From observation to deduction.
I disagree that your quote from Ghil’s abstract is complete nonsense.
I agree with these points you made:
However, I don’t understand enough of your field of interest to discuss the details of what you are suggesting. What I see is geological evidence of 540 million years of climate change, sea level change, fossil changes, and dating of event’s conditions and biosphere responses. We see two Coldhouse phases. We are in one now and will not get out of it for probably tens of millions of years. There has been no ice at either pole for 75% of the past 540 million years. Life thrived during the warmer periods and struggled during the colder periods. We have good evidence from the Pleistocene-Holocene ice age that the climate is very variable during ice ages and sea level rises and falls by over 100 m. We also have good evidence of the similar cycles of ice sheet expansion and retreat and sea level rises and falls during the Carboniferous-Permian ice age. So we know the climate is very variable during periods when there is ice at the poles. I am not aware of evidence that the climate was as variable during periods when there is no ice at the poles.
For an extreme example of rapid (regional) climate changes due to ice sheets look at figure 15:21 here: http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/1983/1/McCarron.pdf
That cannot happen when there is no ice at the poles.
Peter, I am not a geologist and will not be much use to you in the sort of time perspectives that you speak of.
I suggest that the ‘climate system’ that we have today is different to the systems that produced those major swings in temperature, ice cover, precipitation, drought, wind etc that the geologists infer from what they observe.
What I know of the climate system that we have today is based on a close examination of the climate record here:http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl There is less than 70 years data but I can see that the system is evolving. The basic parameters driving the winds and the global circulation evolve over time. One feature stands out. There has been a constant increase in the pressure differential driving the westerly winds in the southern hemisphere since 1948. It appears that this is in part a function of what we measure as geomagnetic activity and is likely part of a 200 year cycle. An essential determining influence on how the climate system that we have today is set up, and works the way it does, is due to the distribution of land and sea. The circumpolar trough of low surface pressure on the margins of Antarctica is a product of the distribution of land and sea and it evolves over time. Climate science ignores this phenomenon, is not interested in the forces governing its evolution and attributes change that is due to this phenomenon to gases of anthropogenic origin.
Very likely, the atmosphere and the ocean and the distribution of the land masses and perhaps the sun itself had very different configurations during the carboniferous era than it does today. I don’t know and can’t comment on the system that might have prevailed at that time. Undoubtedly, orbital influences and the migration of the land masses have had a strong part to play in generating the ‘climate systems’ of those eras. Those climate systems existed in an interstellar environment that too, may have been a little different to what it is today.
The strongest modes of climate variation that we observe today are described as the ‘annular modes’. This involves a shift of atmospheric mass from high to mid latitudes and across the hemispheres fundamentally altering the planetary winds and cloud cover. This was well observed prior to the 1950s, well before the satellite era. Now, with satellites we have a decent view of the southern hemisphere since 1979. That is required if we are to begin to understand the evolution of the Antarctic circumpolar trough and the planetary winds.
erl happ,
The climate changes frequently. Always has and always will. The climate frequently changes abruptly.
NAS, “Abrupt climate change – definition” http://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3#13
NAS, “Abrupt climate changes: inevitable surprises” http://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/1
http://web.vims.edu/sms/Courses/ms501_2000/Broecker1995.pdf
Peter. Agreed, Climate can change abruptly as noted in the first reference you provided:
‘Although more regionally limited, the apparent change in El Niño behavior toward generally warmer and wetter conditions around 1976 (Nitta and Yamada, 1989; Trenberth, 1990; Graham, 1994) could also be considered an abrupt change.’
That change was global in its impact. It is obvious in the changed status of the Aleutian Low and in the pattern of winds and sea surface temperature in the north Pacific. It manifests in a jump in sea surface temperature in the mid and low latitudes of the southern hemisphere. It is seen in particular in the dramatic increase in the temperature of the stratosphere above the southern pole, where the change was greatest and to a lesser extent across the globe and especially above 200 hPa. It has its origin in an increase in the ozone content of the air owing due to a diminished flow of ozone deficient air from the mesosphere inside the polar vortex.
I have no argument with step changes in climate. I believe that this particular step change will reverse as long as the Southern stratosphere continues to cool as it has done so continuously since 1980.
erl happ,
I have not background in the area you are talking about so I am not able to convert what you are saying to an answer to my primary question.
Long ago I heard (perhaps misunderstood) that when the planet is cold, as it is now, there are three Hadley cells in each hemisphere.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQTCCcc03dAsZLJUIPAV430_9JLwK3PqxDqCCuySmGy3WYrj4Dmsg
When the planet is warmer, these join into two in each hemisphere , and eventually just one when much warmer than now. Do you know anything about this?
And if so, would this, together with lower temperature gradient from tropics to poles, suggest less variable climate?
Sorry Peter cant help with that one.
erl Happ,
Thank you for all your replies and explanations. One day, someone will respond and fill in the details or correct me on my understanding of the coalescing of the Hadley cells in warmer climates.
Peter, Come to think of it Earth reverts to a two cell configuration in the summer hemisphere. The polar front contracts in spring to the point where it disappears. In Antarctica, the margins of the high pressure cell of descending air that is present in winter contracts inwards and with it the circumpolar trough so that by November (southern Hemisphere) the trough occupies the continent. In the process the ozone hole appears as tropospheric air containing NOx that circulates outside the polar front tightens and contracts like a hang mans noose below the 50 hPa level.
erl Happ,
Thank you this is interesting:
Peter, you ask: Would you like to speculate on what happens when the planet is in the middle of its normal temperature range (over the past 540 million years) and when it is near the high end of the range? (e.g. in the green to yellow zones in the first of the three charts here: https://judithcurry.com/2016/07/12/are-energy-budget-climate-sensitivity-values-biased-low/#comment-796768)
Thanks for the question. To me the second figure is the one of chief interest. It shows differences in the equator to pole temperature gradient.
First, I want to report an observation that is pertinent to the temperature of the tropics under a warming regime. Over the last seventy years more energy has entered the Earth system. Sea surface temperatures have warmed except for the Antarctic in late winter and spring. That could be due to a shift on the circumpolar trough off the land and onto the sea increasing the surface area dominated by cold winds from the interior of the continent. This comment is just an aside to the main argument but it does illustrate how change in the surface pressure regime can have implications for surface temperature.
Sea surface temperature between 15° north and 15° south latitude shows a range of 1.4°C over seventy years.
At 60-70° south (oceanic margins of Antarctica where the circumpolar trough is located) the whole of period range is 2°C. The warming occurs in winter and is due to enhanced north westerly air flow as the circumpolar trough has deepened between June and November. This illustrates the importance of air flow to the temperature regime at the surface.
If we look back at the tropics, not at the surface but at 850 hPa the whole of period range is 2.3°C about 60% greater than at the surface. The atmosphere gets rid of heat quickly by convection so this is a very significant difference. There is a bigger increase in temperature aloft than at the surface. It represents enhanced evaporation and condensation, the increase in temperature at 850 hPa being due to release of latent heat of condensation. That forms cloud and accelerates convection.
So, it’s entirely plausible that a watery planet with a lot of land surface area in the tropics that supports the growth of rain forests where the evaporative surface area is greatest can exhaust a lot of energy in this way.
Now, lets us imagine that there was no circumpolar trough in the Antarctic so that atmospheric pressure in high latitudes was superior to that at the equator. The delivery of lots of heat to the tropical atmosphere would heat the air reducing surface pressure. Air would flow continuously from the coldest parts to the warmest parts of the globe and the equator to pole temperature gradient would be very steep. Rainfall would tend to be concentrated in the tropics. If there were a lot of land in the tropics to support the growth of forests then this would be a great regime for carbon synthesis.
The difference between this regime of a productive tropical regime and the unproductive ice bound regime in high and mid latitudes where surface pressure differentials favour a flow of air from the poles to the tropics and what we have today where the air flows from equator to poles lies in the presence of today’s circumpolar tough off the margins of Antarctica.
A circumpolar trough of the intensity that one sees surrounding the Antarctic continent all year round has no equivalent in the northern hemisphere. In the north, a weaker trough forms in winter. There is a slight pressure differential favouring a northerly flow of air in July. https://i1.wp.com/reality348.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/july-pressure.jpg?ssl=1&w=450 The pressure differential favouring a northerly flow is stronger in January, https://i2.wp.com/reality348.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/january-pressure.jpg?ssl=1&w=450
So, the question is this. What is responsible for the formation of the circumpolar troughs of surface pressure about the poles and the differences in intensity between these troughs between the northern and the southern hemispheres? It is these troughs that are responsible for the equator to pole movement of the atmosphere in today’s climate regime that enhances the productivity of the mid latitudes, at least in summer.
The trough is a more or less coherent annular ring of polar cyclones.
The difference in intensity of this trough between the hemispheres is due to the distribution of land and sea.
Orthodox climate science IPCC variety, (and in truth there has been no other since the 1970s) insists that the circulation of the atmosphere is driven by heating at the tropics. Unorthodox climate science sees the circulation of the atmosphere being driven from the poles as a response to the ability of the atmosphere to conduct electricity. It responds in an ever changing magnetic field. We record the response to the solar wind in the declination of magnetic needles at the surface of the Earth. The pressure regime, the winds and the ozone content of the stratosphere respond accordingly . The atmosphere rotates in the same direction as the Earth but faster. It tends to drag the Earth along by virtue of friction.
In ‘orthodox climate science’ Polar cyclones with a core of ascending air have a cold core. Certainly the air near the surface in the heart of these cyclones is cold.
In rational climate science cyclogenisis is impossible without a warm core. The warm core can be seen at 250 hPa here: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-42.47,85.08,684/loc=67.136,63.987
The warm core is due to the presence of ozone, an infrared absorber. Warm cores exist at this altitude in summer and winter generating upper air troughs that propagate to the surface to form polar cyclones. Accelerating the movement of air into the stratosphere they give rise to what is called the polar vortex. Locally at 250 hPa they are associated with Jet streams that initiate the ascent of ozone rich low density air to the top of the atmosphere. Inside the vortex mesospheric air that is free of ozone descends and mixes into ozone rich air outside the vortex. The descent of mesospheric air varies with surface pressure modulating the ozone content of the global stratosphere. This in turn modulates the pressure gradients and surface temperature. It is because of this mechanism that we see peak variability in surface temperature in the months of January (NH) and July (SH). It is the winter months where temperature is most variable and variability increases the closer one approaches the source of disturbance, the winter polar atmosphere.
By the way I agree wholeheartedly with your comment: This suggests a 3 C rise in global average temperatures means a small (~1C) change in average temperature of the tropics and a huge benefit in warming of the mid and higher latitudes.
Lots of silly people make the assumption that the current state of affairs is best possible. They are wrong. We live in relatively unfortunate times and let’s hope that we see warming rather than cooling as the sun loses its spots.
erl happ,
Thank you for that. Interesting. It requires a lot of concentration.
I don’t understand why this would make a high temperature gradient. I would have thought that equal flow of hot air from the tropics to the high latitudes would warm the high latitudes and reduce the gradient – especially since there is a much smaller area in the low latitudes than in the high latitudes.
Thanks for the last two paragraphs. Much appreciated. I was hoping for a clear conclusion.
I would suggest you offer Judith a post. This is worth debate by people who know much more about the subject than I do.
Look for a study that looks related. I found this one: Eocene El Nino: Evidence for Robust Tropical Dynamics in the “Hothouse”
Copy the title and paste it into:
https://scholar.google.com/
Click on related articles and cited.
It appears that prediction is now projection, measurements are estimates, the greatest range may be from estimates to vast generalizations & from being merely illuminated to intuitive, all of this underlies all of their AGW science, the one with the big heart.
Now? Measurements have always been estimates. There has never been a time when measurements were not estimates.
Smaller than 1/64″ and you wont even see it anyhow.
“Until these issues and knowledge gaps are sorted out, we don’t have the basis for making the above statements with high confidence.”
Judith Curry is pushing her uncertainty agenda again.
Harry, as I commented earlier the Vostok, ice core data shows five waves over 420K years, that clearly show increasing Temps, followed by CO2 and finally Dust. Why is the pattern the same and dust (particulates) always in last place?
JCH’s explanation that they don’t run as fast as everything else because they are fat, is not an acceptable answer either.
Perhaps not, Arch, but it is an amusing one given how many times the question has been asked, answered, ignored, and asked again ad infinitum.
In other news: chickens cannot possibly lay eggs because they’ve been observed to hatch from them.
brandonrgates, that is the way that a simple guess evolves into many assumptions.
Bye the way, Brandon, my thought is that as the next glacial age ends, sea levels have dropped a bunch and the worlds beaches have grown to a tremendous size worldwide, winds will be increased by the changing climate and thus all the dust. What is your best guess?
P.S. Do you believe god?
Arch Stanton,
You mean like many assumptions based on the simple observation that CO2 lags temperature over the ice age cycles?
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/predation/tmp26.gif
Which population represents the independent variable?
Dust isn’t something I’ve studied, so I don’t have one.
Which one? On the subject of religion, I’m an equal-opportunity doubter.
Arch Stanton.
Sorry, you have mistaken me for someone who would bother explaining a non-sequitur back to a climate change denier over and over again. Go read some papers on the Northern Hemisphere ice age terminations instead of making a public nuisance of yourself.
Just as the swimming rodent is back pooping in the website again.
Bad rodent.
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Benjamin Winchester,
You wrote –
“catweazle, even Judith and Dr. Lindzen and Dr. Spencer agree that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, slowing the loss of heat to space. If you don’t agree with that, I’m not sure what you’re doing here.”
I see. The consensus.
Foolish Warmists get it partly right, of course. The surface doesn’t cool quite as quickly as without the atmosphere, at night, or out of the direct rays of the Sun.
But cool it does. Not heat up. Not get hotter. Its temperature goes down.
If you want to get hotter, stand in sunlight, or generate some heat. CO2 won’t do a damn thing. CO2 heating? I’d like to see that!
Cheers.
True, true, using the deceitful analogy of a greenhouse to peddle global warming propaganda may be the greatest sin Western science ever committed — it’s a sin against physics.
The surface doesn’t cool quite as quickly as without the atmosphere
Right.
As above, take two planets, one with an atmosphere containing CO2,
and one without.
(rhetorical) When one doesn’t cool as much as the other, which one has the higher temperature?
You can still be in the skeptics club even admitting this, though you’ll need a signed exemption form. My exemption reads: “Yeah CO2 leads to warming, but global average temperature turns out not to matter much to climate or weather, so, what?”
“Yeah CO2 leads to warming”
TE,
You realize this is at best very sloppy way of expressing whatever it is you want to express. There are countless charts that indicate cooling in the presence of increased C02. So whatever it is you are trying to say, you need to find some words that aren’t so… incorrect.
Andrew
“Yeah CO2 leads to warming”
Earth must cool to balance the warming from the sun.
Increasing CO2 reduces the rate of cooling.
As mikey intimates, decreased rate of cooling = warming.
So, yeah “CO2 leads to warming”
It’s not unbounded. When a higher temperature occurs, the imbalance imposed by any additional IR opacity is restored by the additional emissions to space because of the higher atmospheric temperature. And as I noted, global average temperature doesn’t matter all that much ( within what’s likely for the next century or two ). But the principle of the warming stands.
“decreased rate of cooling = warming”
Sorry, cooling of any kind doesn’t equal warming. I know you are trying to make a point which I get, but climate science doesn’t present information that way. If the squiggly line going up (1) is warming, then the squiggly line going down (2) is cooling. (1) is not (2).
If you want to declare that everything is warming, no matter which way the line goes, then you’re going to have to say it’s the sun that does the warming. Because that’s what does the “warming” during the “cooling.”
Andrew
Sorry, cooling of any kind doesn’t equal warming.
Reduced cooling which does not balance warming from the sun does.
This warming and cooling confusion appears exactly like word games would.
But that’s climate science for you.
Andrew
I had a similar convo with a Warmer not too long ago and he admitted that the wiggles in climate science charts remain unexplained.
Its all wiggles.
Andrew
You wrote –
“As mikey intimates, decreased rate of cooling = warming.”
You must have misunderstood.
Decreased rate of cooling = decreased rate of cooling. Not heating. The atmosphere prevents an amount of radiation reaching the surface, resulting in lower maximum temperatures than occur on the Moon, for example.
Foolish Warmists believe that heating – as in “Hottest year EVAH!” – somehow results from the surface being cooler as a result of less radiation being absorbed. Quite bizarre.
The Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years. Foolish Warmists, self styled climatologists and toy computer game promoters notwithstanding.
CO2 heats nothing. Removing CO2 cools nothing. Heating is a result of increased heat. No magical greenhouse nonsense required.
Cheers.
If you run away from global warming you get runaway global warming…
Mike, what happens to the heat in a pseudostatic system (heat in == heat out) when the rate of heat loss decreases?
Does the temperature of the system increase, decrease, or stay the same?
The rate it drops slows down.
No – if it was already at pseudostatic, with heat in == heat out, then the temperature was already still.
Say your bank account is receiving $100/month, and you’re also spending $100/month. What happens to your bank account when your spending decreases?
The Earth is receiving energy from the Sun. The Earth also radiates energy back to space.
What happens when the rate of energy loss to space decreases?
Put it in mathematical form. Start with:
dH = heat_in – heat_out.
When you’re at pseudostatic equilibrium, heat_in = heat_out, so dH= 0.
What happens when heat_outdecreases? Is dHeat positive, zero, or negative?
You keep saying it is in balance, it’s only in pseudo-balance twice a day for a brief moment at min and max temp, the rest of the 23 hours and 50-55 minutes it is out of balance.
Benjamin Winchester,
You asked –
“Mike, what happens to the heat in a pseudostatic system (heat in . . ”
I am making the assumption you are not seeking knowledge, merely attempting to deny the fact that the Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
If you are are genuinely seeking my help, please convince me. What efforts have you made to find the answer to your question?
Cheers.
Maybe just the Crust of the Earth…
micro6500,
It’s standard first year thermodynamics, Andrew. Most of us informally learn this principle before we get to kindergarten. I mean it takes a really dumb kid to not realize that donning a jacket on a cold day helps us maintain normal body warmth.
If you have responsible adult supervision about, try this even more straightforward experiment:
1) Bring an uncovered saucepan half-full of tap water to a near boil and carefully adjust the burner to maintain that state.
2) Put a lid on the saucepan and observe what happens.
3) Remove the lid and observe what happens.
4) Increase the burner to its highest setting and observe what happens.
In both steps (2) and (4), the water in the pan should come to a boil due to the slight temperature increase of the water. No word games, just common every day physics.
Brandongates,
Your analogy is flawed. If I take your meaning that the lid on the pot is the atmosphere, the lid is always on.
Also, the heat source is not the lid. It’s the burner. The lid doesn’t make anything warmer. It just makes cooling slower.
Thirdly the properties of a pan lid and C02 are not the same.
Andrew
Hilarious:
http://supremeappliances.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/dlx-fry-pan-with-lid.jpg
Silly JCH, that’s not a saucepan, it’s a deep skillet. Get with it.
Bad Andrew,
The atmosphere is always there.
Indeed. CO2 isn’t the heat source, the sun is.
We agree. That’s the message Benjamin and JCH have been communicating.
I’m aware of that. However, the lid and CO2 share one feature in common: they both retard the rate of heat loss, or as you just wrote “make cooling slower”. The point of the analogy was that nobody but the most pedantic hair-splitters desperately attempting to discount the obvious would fault you for saying that putting a lid on a saucepan causes the water inside to warm up even though the heat input of the burner has remained constant.
Here is an explanation I read in the comments from another site that breaks it down in terms that a layman like me can understand. Question is, how accurate is the following statement?
There is no energy created by CO2. Nor does it store energy, and even if it could there so little of it in the atmosphere to supposedly hold heat, it would never be possible for the phantom retained heat of CO2 to heat the rest of the planet, as the there isn’t enough mass of CO2 to effectively transfer enough heat to do so. CO2 is impotent as a warming agent of ANY SIGNIFICANCE. The photons that are absorbed then re-emitted by any molecule came from the sun first.
Any additional energy necessary to warm the planet at all can only come from the sun. The hardly worth talking about temperature increase of less than 1C since 1850 is certainly nothing to worry about anyway. The additional energy that drove those increasing temperatures, especially 1980-2004, came from the modern maximum in solar activity.
I define the modern maximum in solar activity here:
The sun had 65% higher sunspot activity for the 70 years between 1935-2004, than the previous 70 years between 1865-1934. The earlier 70 year period averaged 65.8 annually, whereas the latter 70 year period averaged 108.5/year. Data used for this came from the v2 SSNs from the WDC-SIDC. The version one SSN disparity was 89% between the 70 year periods. After the revision, it is now 65% TSI tracks with sunspot activity, meaning TSI was correspondingly higher for those 70 years compared to the previous 70 years. That higher TSI delivered the heat (photons) into the system that caused “global warming”.
The sun does not have a static output, and it’s variation is higher than the 0.1% muted value that the IPCC uses. Furthermore there is a level of solar activity that is insufficient to warm the planet, and when that happens, that’s when the globe cools. That is the scenario we are entering into now, as the next one or two solar cycles are expected to be lower than this low cycle, the lowest 100 years.
This is why the USA has scientists and accomplishes things. It’s a big advantage over the Aztecs and their sun worship.
Barnes,
It’s not accurate: Any form of matter can store energy. Strictly speaking in quantum mechanical terms, matter IS energy.
CO2 is perfectly capable of absorbing radiative energy and transferring it kinetically to the nitrogen or oxygen molecules which make up the bulk of the atmosphere — which, being lousy LW emitters — are all to happy to hang onto it for a time.
More or less correct. Radioactive decay and residual heat left over from the planet’s formation makes its way into the climate system, but compared to the Sun that flux is negligible.
The atmosphere can and does impede heat loss from the system, and that can and does affect temperature.
The difference between today and an ice age is 4-6 C. Piddly. Hardly worth a mention. However, a 2-3 C warming being 50% of the distance to an ice age in the opposite direction — and just outside the scale of a single human lifetime — gets my attention as a scenario probably best avoided if possible. YMMV.
Almost certainly not. The net change in solar output from the Maunder Minimum and today is 1.1 W/m^2:
https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_ann.png
Divide by four to account for spherical geometry and multiply by 0.7 to account for albedo, and the effective solar forcing is 0.2 W/m^2. Assuming a 1 C change in temperature over that interval, the implied climate sensitivity parameter is 5.0 C W^-1 m^2, which is alarmingly high by IPCC standards … they put it at about 0.8 C W^-1 m^2.
I got my solar data from here
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant
Brandonrgates,
And yet, in spite of all your overcoats and pots of water, the Earth has demonstrably cooled since its creation.
CO2 in the air heats nothing. Removing CO2 from the air cools nothing.
Foolish Warmist nonsense, no more, no less.
Cheers.
JCH, just because the Aztecs, like the Egyptians before them and other cultures back even further in time.. worshipped the Sun, Their scientists simply planted and when the plant had sprouted they put a stone pot over the plant and it died even thought the earth was well watered. It’s the Sun stupid…
2Ki 23:5 And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.
Current estimates about the Sun, are well known to all so today so now we cast our alms to those priests that study the planets in heavens while in our hearts we still may pray for rain. You’ve come a long way baby…
Atmospheric CO2 is the control knob of the climate on our planet. So far, the only planet available to us for which the sun has any real utility to mankind/life whatsoever.
It’s not even close, H2O controls the planet
https://micro6500blog.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/high2slowcooling.png
Set one, match…
If the planet Mars, were to become the Mediterranean of our solar system, how much will it cost then to ship one pound to the final destination, you may provide the cost estimate for your round trip ticket, however.
While you are figuring please do not forget to add your 37% gratuity. Remember our clause for your financial responsibilities when/if extraordinary events were to overtake your flight.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Solar_evolution_%28English%29.svg/1280px-Solar_evolution_%28English%29.svg.png
The Sun heats nothing, Mike. Blocking incoming sunlight cools nothing. Invisible farting unicorns for the gold … again!
micro6500,
PMOD is in good agreement with this one from NCDC …
https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_ncdc_monthly.png
… which goes back much further. My point stands; looking for a ~0.8 C change in surface temperature (mostly) due to the Sun when TSI has only changed 1.1 W/m^2 (and thus effective insolation by 0.2 W/m^2) since the 17th Century is a pretty tall order.
I dearly hope you’re not suggesting that the diurnal temperature cycle is driven by the inverse of relative humidity.
First, there’s a 6W/m-2 swing in solar in just the data I have.
I’m not looking for a 0.8C change.
I’ve been looking to see if night time cooling has changed. It isn’t a question of warming, or temperature , it’s a question of cooling.
And as far as I know, I’m the only one doing it.
What?
First if I understand the definition of the diurnal cycle correctly, I don’t use a diurnal cycle, I look at a thermal cycle.
Second the cooling portion of a daily thermal cycle is driven by the sun setting. The cooling rate though is limited when rel humidity gets into the 80’s and 90’s %. This is evident in the tropics, and deserts of the world, as well as my weather station which I showed this effect. Look at the low temps the first few days, and the final day, and note the dew points. Co2 while involved in dry air cooling, it’s just not effective at slowing cooling, yet rel humidity is.
micro6500,
Between noon and midnight at any point in the tropics, there’s a diurnal swing between zero and ~1,360 W/m^2.
I am because the topic of this subthread was invoking TSI as the main driver for late 20th Century temperature change. Discussing the change in TSI over three centuries was me being generous. There just isn’t enough secular change in solar output to do it within the realm of plausible climate sensitivity to external forcing on centennial timescales.
You may be the only one using your method, but you’re not the only person looking at this kind of stuff.
Well … yes, that’s what I was saying.
Ok sure, let’s think about this. As relative humidity approaches 100%, evaporative cooling from the surface slows and water stands a good chance of condensing … which is exothermic. Result: a reduction in nighttime rate of cooling.
Problem I have is that this tells me little about the global energy budget because there’s a lot more atmosphere above your weather station, and a lot more going on there than just latent heat fluxes.
I really can’t fault you for gathering your own data and looking at it, but I’d keep in mind the statement apocryphally attributed to Einstein: All models should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. About as simple as I’m comfortable making it is radiative flux at TOA. Do anything to create a sustained downward energy imbalance, and the system must eventually warm up to compensate.
By long-term, I mean “centennial”. Daily/seasonal/annual/decadal variability is interesting stuff, and it’s important to understand those things. But a 6 W/m^2 wiggle in TSI over some much shorter timeframe is noise compared to the long-term trend induced by the secular change in CO2 concentration since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
IOW, let’s not compare apples to kittens.
We live at the surface, and we can’t really even measure that.
What we might be able to tell is if it doesn’t cool as fast as it use to. In fact that is the only way co2 can affect temperature.
Well thank you for that. You realize I spent 15 years as a simulation and modeling expert for dozens of electronic design customers including both designing the fast chip to date at Goddard SFC, as well as building the model library for the next generation ecl process, and supported simulations for nsa, nrl, Sprint, Bell Labs, and more I can’t even remember, right?
First our measurement uncertainty is greater than the difference we’re trying to measure, second it’s never actually in balance, you’d have to measure the entire Earth’s incoming and outgoing 24x7x365.25 by 360 degrees for a year to measure ToA for balance. Call me skeptical.
roflmao well your not measuring it, do you intent to pick lucky guesses out of a spinning drum?
I pointed out a 6W/m-2 variance in the modern tsi record.
micro6500,
Yet here you are making confident assertions based on surface data that CO2 is doing nuffin’.
Unfortunately, figuring out what is happening at the surface probably requires some understanding of what goes on above and below it. Many papers have been written attempting to do just that.
We can tell by noting accumulation of energy in the system over multiple decades of time:
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000mwerrpent.png
You’re welcome. No, I didn’t realize that. I’ll try to keep in mind that I should not need remind you of such things.
I knew that I included a plot with error bars above for good reason. Again, I’ll point out that uncertainty only seems to apply for you when you’re attacking my position. When you’re advancing your own position, if there’s any discussion of “the effect is smaller than the error bars” I’ve not seen it.
Nope, I’m packing centennial-scale data showing increase in surface temperature outside of the estimated error:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/web_figures/hadcrut4_annual_global.png
That’s about as far from plucking numbers out of a hat, my bunghole or any other dark and mysterious orifice as I can think of.
And I pointed out a daily 1,360 W/m^2 insolation variance near the equator. At least I did you the courtesy of giving the relevant temporal resolution.
Brandonrgates,
Excellent work.
You have, of course, fallen into the trap of believing that correlation implies causation.
It doesn’t. Adding CO2 to air does not raise its temperature. Removing CO2 from air does not cause a temperature fall.
Have you any science to back up your foolish Warmist faith?
Cheers.
The surface is poorly sampled, there isn’t enough data to create a GAT that isn’t at least half made up. But there are a lot of surface stations, and I know very well what they are recording.
Above and below are even more poorly measured, Satellite temps are pretty good, and my data does a good job of matching that.
All that tells, is at the points measured more energy has accumulated, but then they go and start making up data for 90% of the unmeasured ocean. It also does not tell you why it accumulating. And somehow I bet if you dig into that uncertainty number it’ll be bunk, or based on the measurements, not all of the made up points.
Have you downloaded any of my data? probably not, or you would notice I generate an uncertainty number based on my data. However I am not sure it’s correct. So I can say this with certainty
Over the last 75 years Min temps at surface stations have fallen an average of -0.004F and max temps have risen 0.001F +/-0.1F across the planet.
We have even worse data at the centennial scale. I have data for the 30’s, I don’t go back that far, even the 40’s are not good, but the 30’s are so bad I don’t even include it.
As did I, over the last 50 years it’s changed by 6W/m-2
But the high value was May 12th 1989, and the low value was Oct 29 2003
Congratulations, Mike, you’ve just delivered a last resort of motivated thinkers everywhere. Sun shines, things warm up. Sun doesn’t shine, things cool off. Since correlation doesn’t imply causation, invisible farting unicorns must be doing it.
What, you’ve run out of way to argue that slowing cooling adds heat?
But at least you are starting to get it, when the Sun isn’t shining it cools off, and Co2 doesn’t stop it from cooling.
Are people never going to take farts seriously?
micro6500,
Here’s your plot again:
https://micro6500blog.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/high2slowcooling.png
Here’s your comment: It’s not even close, H2O controls the planet
Your concept of “poorly sampled” is not consistent.
Which data? Quantify “pretty good”.
99.9999999999% of the unmeasured ocean. Those floats are small. Thing is, I have a tough time swallowing the implied notion that a bunch of cold water has systematically managed to evade detection for decades.
The data don’t live in a vacuum. I’ve got predictions (dating to 1896 no less) based on theory backed by subsequent confirmatory evidence. You’ve got double standards on sampling and …
… unsubstantiated wagers, insinuations, etc. I get it that you live in a reality where your personal calculations trump that of domain experts published in refereed primary literature. You’ll pardon me if I have trouble accepting your POV on this point.
Yes.
I’ve pointed out to you numerous times that your averages are sensitive to changes in the number of observations, and are therefore likely spurious. You’re apparently taking simple arithmetic averages at the station level instead of the more standard (and sane) practice of gridding, then taking area-weighted averages of the grids. You consistently discount that argument. I’m tired of talking about it.
So let’s talk about this instead: why is it all of a sudden that your data are adequately sampled, but HADCRUT4 is not?
Quantifiably so. The average 95% confidence intervals (+/- degrees C) by decade for HADCRUT4 are:
Data files are here, the first block of files under “HadCRUT4 time series: ensemble medians and uncertainties”. Fairly consistently, the uncertainty in the 19th Century is about twice that of the 20th Century. Since climate is a discussion of multi-decadal trends, the most appropriate uncertainties are the decadal estimates, and those are teensy compared to the change over the entire instrumental record.
You pointed me to the PMOD webpage, here’s a plot:
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/tsi/composite/pics/comp_ext_neu_42_65_1605.png
Figure 5. The extended PMOD composite TSI as daily values plotted in different colors for the different originating experiments. The differences between the minima values is also indicated, together with amplitudes of the three cycles.
2016-1976 = 40.
Computing a multi-decade trend based on two daily values, really?
Look. The whole reason I’m talking about TSI right now is because Wagathon said: What we now know about the sun explains everything about late 20th century warming.
How exactly does noting a negative 6 W/m^2 change taken from two *daily* extremes separated by just over 14 years answer the *multi-decadal* climate question at hand? You’re killing me. Here’s this plot again, which shows the relevant time frame Wagathon is talking about (late 20th century, which I’ll interpret as 1951-2000, the latter half of the century):
https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_ncdc_monthly.png
As you can see, since 1950, the TSI *trend* has been essentially flat. But just to make sure my eyeballs aren’t fooling me, I’ll regress that interval. The answer is 0.0047 W m-2 yr-1, or 0.24 W/m^2 over the entire 50-year interval. Divide that by four to account for the nearly spherical geometry of the planet and multiply by 0.7 to account for albedo, and we get a whopping 0.04 W/m^2 forcing due to TSI.
Ok, thermal inertia he says. Planet doesn’t respond to external forcing immediately. Fair enough. From 1882 through 1950, the trend is 0.0104 W m-2 yr-1 or 0.56 W/m^2 over the entire interval, works out to 0.10 W/m^2 change in forcing.
It’s going to take more than just idle speculation to explain the observed temperature change from 1951-2000 (call it 0.4 C) on the strength of a 0.1 W/m^2 forcing.
I disagree. How many surface station records are there in the ncdc gsod data set by year, by as a minimum continent? How many of those stations recorded a full year of data? And how has the sampling changed over time?
And then how does that affect my unique method? And how can you tell whether any signal is a sampling problem or not?
Seems while you want me to explain all of why I have confidence in the results, how to tell what to ignore, you don’t want to believe me, nor have you actually taken the time to understand what I’m doing, you just try to compare it to how everyone else does it.
Maybe you don’t get that they don’t have any more records than I do, and if my averages have some noise, I do so instead of making up data that doesn’t exist.
inverted mndiff. By mk2 eyeball an r greater than .8 or so.
Decades? ARGO hasn’t been deployed very long, doesn’t go deep, and the samples are not random, nor stationary. Shipping lanes are the opposite they follow the shipping lanes, and that is ignoring the questionable measurements, but that isn’t the main issue, currents are not linear, as well as there are things like gyer that have small (in ocean scales) features, you can only linear extrapolate between measurements, but if the features are nonlinear, your areas are made up.
and it’s based on how many weather stations taking how many measurement? Now run out and quote the quoted uncertainty, frankly after seeing the ncdc data, that’s a joke, might as well believe she didn’t send or receive any classified emails.
So what seems to get missed, is there are a lot of smart competent people following this topic, I just happen to be one of many. So as I mentored I was a subject matter expert for about a dozen simulators and circuit analyzers, for the last 19 years I’ve been a subject matter expert in data, data migration for what is now the largest product lifecycle management product in the world, the last 8 or so years, I was the subject matter expert. You have a lot of stuff I’ve worked on, as I’ve done work for many of the biggest tech and medical companies. So, yes I trust my ability to look at and analyze data, especially after seeing what they are trying to pass off as good data, and remember temp data isn’t any different than data you’d get from a simulator. And much of the 15 years supporting simulation tools was spent understanding just what the simulator was generating, and why. When we’d do demo’s, customers would give us their usually trick circuit, I have to create any missing models, create the circuit schematic, simulate the circuit, and understand the results enough to explain the results to the customer. I could model the climate in analog circuits, it’d just be too slow to be of any value. Sorting out temp records isn’t even hard in comparison. So, yeah the climate subject matter experts don’t intimidate me.
Based on this comment, you don’t understand what I’m really doing, nor why I don’t area weight, and apparently didn’t realize I do a 1×1 grid to have a reference area weighted average, though area averaging isn’t what I’m doing, which is why I don’t do it, let alone realize my intention was to do as little to the data as possible, I wanted to see the actual data, not the post processed trash.
as I’ve mentioned I’m not trying to find the average over a 2d surface, I’m averaging some number of point measurements. But I also am mostly concerned with just the difference measurements, where the most critical data is all referenced just to the station taking the measurement. This allows me to make the difference data standalone. There is some dependency on latitude which is why I produce a data product of latitude bands, alone with the 1×1 cells, and continents, and hemispheres(as well as station reports, and a few other types of information that might be useful for each area processed), this provides the best possible data for the analysis being done, from the marginal data that we have.
The temp 30 miles away ranges from being about the same, to being +/- ~5F, when I hear uncertainty values being quoted my bs detector goes off, now that might be the measurement uncertainty, but it isn’t the area weighed average uncertainty. No matter what they claim, BTW I downloaded cru data 5 years ago, and found their station list was an almost exact duplicate of the ncdc station list I have.
I didn’t say that, you make a lot of assumptions. I responded to the statement that there was only a fraction of a Watt change in tsi. I use the tsi data to calculate daily watt hours for every one of my stations, in fact that’s running now. But I calculate a relative forcing so I can just multiple it by that days tsi, a forcing based on the daily PMOD value, as well as I average the entire PMOD series and use that for dates outside (or missing) the PMOD date range.
The last bit, you go back to removing all of the variance, and then waving your hands saying all of the day to day changes are meaningless, well I process daily data, and point out again the earth’s climate is dynamic on a daily basis, when you make the parameters static averages, it’s no long representative of the earth’s climate.
Now, I’m not around my computer over the weekend, so this was done on my phone, pardon any typos and broken sentences if there are any.
The Washington Post article about the drought of US land-falling hurricanes has been devastating to the alarmism industry and probably not so good either for all of Florida’s economy given the dirty little secret that an entire industry has grown up around milking the FEMA disaster relief fund.
This has got to be how Rome fell. Check it out: the Left is running against politicians today for what they say will happen 100 years from now.
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/05/marco-rubio-climate-change-denier-south-florida-flood-crisis-420326.html
“What physical mechanisms can explain recent as well as past decadal variability?”
Unknown, but obviously at work.
A productive approach for the climate science community would be to address the physical mechanism for why CO2 has not driven temperature at ANY timescale. It would force them to dig into the physics of CO2 beyond the level of “it’s a greenhouse gas”, a realm in which they are woefully ignorant.
The oceans moving warm water around, changes airflow and therefore the pattern of tropically warmed water vapor over land.
Too slow. Taking some license with “past decadal” to mean way past. There are examples of extreme warming events in Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula that cast a whole new light on decadal variability. Tropically warmed water gets a better shot at Greenland thanks to Atlantic dynamics. Not so much the Antarctic Peninsula.
You would have to move the Pacific Warm Pool to these high latitude spots to get several degrees warming in a decade.
Warm pools, Currents, and airflow seem quite able to make significant changes to surface temps over a year or so.
Beyond that, more data is required for me to make a comment.
I think you are right in principle. It would be possible to explain Greenland warming by a small deviation of the Gulf Stream.
What would cause this deviation? The quandary is that the ocean surface provides most of the energy to the atmosphere, yet atmospheric winds determine the direction of ocean currents.
What configuration of winds would direct ocean current to Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula at the same time (or even alternately as they seem to do sometimes)?
Here are the currents today:
https://geosciencebigpicture.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/antarctic-currents-8-16.png
You can see that it would likely take some sort of inverse Gulf Stream from the west Pacific to warm the Antarctic Peninsula. Not impossible, but nothing like that going on today.
gymnosperm,
There are practically infinite examples of local variability being greater than global variability. Throw a dart at a global map and run an instrumental temperature history on the grid containing its coordinates. You can’t miss.
“Many participants supported the notion that, because 93 percent of the excess heat from GHGs is stored in the ocean, sea-level rise, or sea-level rise together with GMST, may be a more appropriate metric of global climate change.”
Maybe not:
All Natural… Four New Scientific Publications Show No Detectable Sea Level Rise Signal!:
“It is widely assumed that sea levels have been rising in recent decades largely in response to anthropogenic global warming. However, due to the inherently large contribution of natural oscillatory influences on sea level fluctuations, this assumption lacks substantiation. Instead, natural factors or internal variability override the detection of an anthropogenic signal and may instead largely explain the patterns in sea level rise in large regions of the global oceans.
Scientists who have recently attempted to detect an anthropogenic signal in regional sea level rise trends have had to admit that there is “no observable sea-level effect of anthropogenic global warming,” or that the “sea level rise pattern does not correspond to externally forced anthropogenic sea level signal,” and that sea level “trends are still within the range of long-term internal decadal variability.” ”
They will have to keep searching for a distinct anthropogenic signal. Eventually, those who search will find what they are looking for – thats why searching for evidence is not a robust scientific method.
And there isn’t one in the land surface data either, go figure.
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog.
Benjamin Winchester,
You wrote –
“So greenhouse gases do not cause the temperature of the atmosphere to rise?”
Yes. You are absolutely correct.
Only foolish Warmists would believe that removing CO2 from a sample of air would result in the temperature dropping day by day. Where would it stop?
Cheers.
/
I’ll inform Drs Spencer, Lindzen, and Curry that they’re “foolish warmists”.
Benjamin Winchester,
Do that. Tell Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt while you’re at it.
By the way, you might care to cut and paste a falsifiable hypothesis relating to the heating powers of CO2, or even a repeatable experiment showing same. If you can. I assume at least one climatologist follows the scientific method.
Otherwise, foolish Warmists might be thought to be practising Cargo Cult Scientism rather than science.
What point are you trying to make?
Cheers.
When everyone working in a field disagrees with you, and not just that field but also adjacent fields… well, think about it. Is it more likely that 99% of scientists have basic physics wrong, or that you’re wrong?
No problem:
CO2 absorbs some frequency ranges of longwave radiation. (verifiable and verified). Light carries energy. Absorption of light slows down the energy transfer, particularly when combined with thermalization and isotropic re-radiation. (also verifiable and verified)
When you slow down heat loss in a system, the system warms warms up.
So there ya go. That’s how CO2 can work to increase the temperature of a system, and it’s backed up by both the basic logic of the physics and by plenty of actual experiments. You could run such an experiment yourself, if you’re so inclined.
So ignoring this.
I can’t, as much as I try, no, no, no this is wrong.
If you put something in the oven on 400F, putting insulation around it or not does not cause it to warm up, and will never cause it to warm up.
And after it is warmed up, when you take it out of the oven, insulation or not it still cools down.
In no case does it warm, none, not one.
Now, I’ve been measuring the cooling rate, and have spent 8 years studying if there has been a reduction in cooling in NCDC’s GSoD, and there hasn’t been.
So regardless of the experts, there is no evidence of a loss of cooling over night from any source let alone Co2.
Micro, if you have a system that is roughly in thermal balance, where heat energy in == heat energy out, then decreasing the heat loss does indeed cause the system to warm.
“Warms” just means that the thermal energy of the system increases. For whatever reason. If the thermal energy is rising, then the system is warming.
And again, this is easily verifiable, both by running experiments (it’s been done many, many times) and by understanding the physics.
There’s the problem, I had different conditions on the system when changing the insulation. At night, the system is in cooling mode, it’s not in balance, in fact it’s about as far out of balance as it gets.
And the reason co2 doesn’t do anything is because the cooling rate at night is non-linear, and seems to be regulated by dew points.
As long as rel humidity isn’t too high, as soon as the Sun sets temps fall like a rock. This is when Co2 matters, but it matters so little it does nothing to temps. Just look at how quickly deserts cool at night.
So you can follow along, right after sunset temps drop quickly 4 or 5F per hour, Co2 matters here. As Rel humidity starts going up, cooling rates slow down, under 2F/hour, dropping to 0 as the Sun comes back up.
https://micro6500blog.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/high2slowcooling.png
The oven is inappropriate way to look at this because the heating element turns off when a sensor detects a set temperature.
The sun does not turn off.
Imagine an oven where the heating element stays on for 10 minutes and turns off for 5 minutes… cannot be altered. To set the temperature, create an adjustable vent with temp increments and calibrate it. Set it to 200F, the vent will release heat at a rate that will allow the oven to heat to 200F, but no more. Say it cycles from 150F to 200F. This was roughly the system on old wood stoves. A damper in the flue acted as a thermostat. It controlled the movement of heat to the sky, and Grandmother controlled the heat of her stove by adjusting it. The ERL is the size of the damper opening.
Muleskinner Blues
Well I smell your bread a burnin’
Woman gonna turn your damper down; turn it down …
She got the oven too hot by closing the damper.
Benjamin Winchester,
You wrote –
“When you slow down heat loss in a system, the system warms warms up.”
Not necessarily. Complete foolish Warmist nonsense. Surround a hot object with an insulator. Watch it cool. Surround it with a better insulator. Watch it cool a little more slowly.
Foolish Warmism. No heating.
See the Earth at its creation, with a molten surface. See the Earth now, with a non molten surface. Deny all you like. Earth has cooled.
Your hypothesis is not only silly but also pointless.
I win. You lose. Maybe you feel like trying again. No foolish Warmist has managed to propose a falsifiable hypothesis to date – which is why I use the word foolish. Just more Cargo Cult Scientism, trying to turn fantasy into fact using the awesome power of hand waving.
Cheers.
Mike, a hot object w/ just an insulator isn’t in pseudostatic equilibrium. It only has heat loss, no heat gain. There’s no balance between the two, and putting an insulator on it just slows the loss.
In contrast, the Earth’s surface gains heat from the Sun (and a little from geothermal), and loses heat to space. And when these are balanced, the Earth’s temperature is pretty stable. When you decrease the loss to space, or when you increase the heat from the Sun, the Earth heats up.
It seems the Earth disagrees since there’s no sign of any loss of cooling.
Plus you noted the change in solar, the latest tsi data I have has a much bigger swing than 1 Watt, I’ll look it up in a little bit.
Exactly, just like the earth is during it’s cooling period.
Solar comes in a pulse during the day (btw I look up the data, it’s swung by 6W/m-2 over the last 50 or so years), though it is still losing energy all day, but the climate has different regulation mechanisms during the day, than the night.
During the day, we get clouds, big fluffy cumulus clouds, blocking solar incoming, but they are actually almost 100F warmer than clear skies as well, and it’s breezy a lot. At night, the clouds will go away, the breeze stops, temps drop quickly, until air temps near the dew point, were the cooling greatly slows down.
The thing is, Co2 is only important during the high cooling rate period, and it doesn’t seem to matter. Which would be the case when you calculate how much energy the lost at night prior to the slow down, the added Watts from Co2 are just a fraction of the energy lost.
Now, I won’t argue that Co2 does not make day time temps warmer, I think it probably does, some small amount, But in our human environment we’ve created there is a long list of other things that have added far more warming than co2 could possibly do. I’ll point to asphalt, which on a sunny day will be 40F warmer than air temps, we’ve removed forests, built cities, these change temps from forests to city asphalt by probably more than 50F.
Plus, it’s lost to space, if not by tomorrow, by the fall.
What, it doesn’t cool off at night where you live?
The daily cooling rate has nothing to do with the Sun rising someplace else.
Btw, I can show you many days where my weather station records a breeze during the day, then stops at night, only to start back up when the sun is shining.
Benjamin Winchester,
You wrote –
“In contrast, the Earth’s surface gains heat from the Sun (and a little from geothermal), and loses heat to space. And when these are balanced, the Earth’s temperature is pretty stable. When you decrease the loss to space, or when you increase the heat from the Sun, the Earth heats up.”
Only a foolish Warmist would keep attempting to throw in red herrings to avoid discussing facts. Increasing the heat from the Sun has nothing to do with the alleged Earth heating properties of CO2.
As to decreasing the loss to space, you overlook the fact that the Earth is surrounded by atmosphere. No matter how devoutly you desire it, insulators cannot trap or accumulate heat. The insulator on the unlit side of the Earth generally has the same properties as that exposed to the Sun.
The insulating effect at night allows the surface to cool – very quickly in arid cloudless conditions, slightly more slowly otherwise. The r^4 law has an effect on cooling rate as well, as do emissivities.
After four and a half billion years, the physics are obvious. The Earth has cooled.
No heat trapping, no wondrous CO2 heating. Foolish Warmism, no more, no less. Adding CO2 to air does not heat it. Removing CO2 from air doesn’t cool it.
CO2 is plant food. At present, more is better. Producing CO2 enables the production of such things as electricity, steel, cement, medical supplies, transport and so on. Foolish Warmists want to wipe out humanity, apparently because James Hansen hates coal, and created the Warmist Church of Latter Day Scientism, drawing large numbers of gullible foolish Warmists into his congregation.
Tell me again how CO2 heats the Earth. Back it up with a scientific repeatable experiment, and I’ll believe! Foolish Warmist irrelevant analogies or sophistry, or toy computer game scenarios, are not science.
Cheers.
All I wanted to know is why the glacial ages come and go, over and over and over…
Physics and chemistry and biology…
At cave-man you?
You know Brandon, I actually have to thank you, this was all getting really annoying, then it came to me.
You kept trying to prove the system was in balance, and because of that, any slow down in cooling would cause warming.
But, the hemispheres are asymmetrical, Earth’s axis is tilted, there is no static balance, maybe after a year there might be a dynamic balance, then it struck me, there isn’t going to be a balance, when it’s warm those areas will cool the fastest, and where it isn’t of course it cools slower, basically it can “borrow” energy, store it in any number of ways, and the return it later.
The idea that ToA has to show a balance on our idea of the proper space and time is ludicrous, And just leads to snipe hunting, and stupid arguments about how insulation has to cause warming.
I have an experiment for Warmers to try. Put a lid on a boiling hot pot and record what happens. Then take a different lid and put it on top of a snowman like a hat, and record what happens. Compare results.
Andrew
JCH,
You wrote –
Now? Measurements have always been estimates. There has never been a time when measurements were not estimates.
This is a classic and oft-repeated foolish Warmist claim, to justify certainty in the face of uncertainty.
Your statement, although generally and pointlessly correct, is not as certain as you might wish. For example, I might ask you to construct a wall of appropriate standard Lego blocks, 12 blocks high, by 12 blocks long. You would note that the length is greater than the height, as my unit of measurement varies with the axis in which it is used.
It is not an estimate. 12 is 12, not 11 or 13.
You might complain that measuring the wall in other units, such as mm or in, requires you to estimate. True, but my unit is the standard Lego block that you have in your hand at the time. As a matter of fact, you could build a house using house bricks as a measure if you wished. Or you might wish to measure eggs in dozens.
I understand you might complain that you don’t like my exact units of measure, because they give you no foolish Warmist WriggleRoom. Bad luck.
Sorry for being picky, but foolish Warmists tend to react adversely when faced with requests for precision, accuracy, or repeatability. Foolish Warmist measurements are very often meaningless estimates. Science and engineering often ask for a bit more.
Cheers.
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