Climate Audit

Carl Smith

For those interested in solar cycles material, I have written a post called “New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?”
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/24

This examines Dr Landscheidt’s 2003 paper of the same name – here is the the abstract of the paper:

Abstract: Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8° C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected. It is shown that minima in the 80 to 90-year Gleissberg cycle of solar activity, coinciding with periods of cool climate on Earth, are consistently linked to an 83-year cycle in the change of the rotary force driving the sun’s oscillatory motion about the centre of mass of the solar system. As the future course of this cycle and its amplitudes can be computed, it can be seen that the Gleissberg minimum around 2030 and another one around 2200 will be of the Maunder minimum type accompanied by severe cooling on Earth. This forecast should prove skillful as other long-range forecasts of climate phenomena, based on cycles in the sun’s orbital motion, have turned out correct as for instance the prediction of the last three El Nià±os years before the respective event.

As Steve M wishes to keep his blog focused mostly on his current areas of interest this is simply a shameless plug 🙂 and any discussion of this material should be done over on my blog rather than here.

Gerald Machnee

Re #2 – Thanks, Paul M. I have been searching and have found several studies. etc, but they talk about several aspects including long wave radiation at the surface, but no percentage caused by the short wave radiation was given.
I have seen some “forecasts” of lakes warming several degrees due to global warming, but I think there is an upper limit based on the amount of sunshine that would be received. There is some contrbution by streams flowing in as well, but again, no percentages were given.

aurbo

Re #4,

Hansen isn’t happy unless the inmates are running the asylum. His complaints about his views being suppressed are a crock…just look at (via Google or elsewhere) how often his name and views were distributed throughout the media during the so-called period when he was being “gagged”.

BTW, In regard to the usual assertion that AGW skeptics are being bought off by “big oil” didn’t Hansen receive “awards” of about $750,000 in the past few years…$250,000 from the Heinz Foundation in 2001 noted here and a whopping $500,000 from the Dan David Prize Foundation, a philanthropy managed this past year by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and presented by Jacques Chirac see article here?

The only incidents of gagging I’m familiar with comes after reading his pronouncements.

D. F. Linton

Re# 238, #308, and many other on urban heat inputs on #11:

These discussions always end with changes in temperature. What if the term Urban _Heat_ Island is literally true? Can’t urban heat be stored in increasingly humid air just as easily as in higher temperature air? There are certainly large number of water vapor emitters, both huamn and mechanical in an urban environment. Does any one know if there has been any study of changes in absolute humidity in urban locations over that last century?

Anthony Watts

SteveM re: online database – see email sent directly

John Nicklin

Well, Hansen and others aside, I was just informed that Climate Audit is paid for by Exxon through the George Marshall Institute. Unfortunately some people will believe anything that supports their agenda.

As for me, I have found this site to be well balanced and very informative, particulaly for someone like me who does not have a physics or math background.

Thanks to Steve M.

Mark T.

John, what I find funny is that this is actually used as an argument to refute Steve’s discoveries. These trained scientists don’t seem to understand the concept of simple logical fallacies. Even if he were funded by the devil himself, what difference does it make if he’s right? I.e., an argument stands on its own merits, regardless of who paid for it, or who backs it. Their own hypocrisy in this regard is also astounding.

Mark

Absurdity

Senators warn Bush on G8 climate push

Germany has called for a statement limiting worldwide temperature rise this century to two degrees Celsius

Steve Sadlov

RE: #17 – The statement will start out with the word “Achtung!” ……. sorry, I could not resist.

Jon

Following our discussion of Mann’s Divergence theory; I’ve suddenly become interested in this question of whether group-delay is being accounted for during graph plotting.

My question to Steve and others who have access to the raw-datasets and the smoothing functions is this: Are the smoothed curves time-shifted to compensate for the group-delay?

bigcitylib

Let me get this straight. You deleted my two line post because it contained the “A” word,
but you are keeping the post that refers to an A__loger’s attempt to refute mainstream climatologists?
Is that the situation here?

jae

22: Note, also, that his concern with CO2 is Stratospheric cooling and resulant ozone destruction.

bigcitylib

It frankly astounds me that Mr. McIntyre would delete my post critizing the notion that a blog like this
should be paying ANY kind of attention to a climate change “skeptic” who told fortunes in his spare time,,
but keep a link to a site propounding this guys theories. It seems to me that the onus is on Mr.
McIntyre to keep his blog fruit-loop free, given its larger purpose.

Richard Sharpe

Misuse of Scientific Data By the White House

Surely not 🙂

Gerald Browning

Steve M.

Just thought that you might be amused that Doug Nychka is now posted as the latest superhero on the NCAR web site. 🙂

Jerry

Steve McIntyre

#31. If you want to be pedantic, mentions of “astrology” are deleted “automatically” only in the sense that I will delete it automatically when I notice it. It’s not deleted automatically by software. No more discussion of this – please move it to Carl Smith’s blog. I’ve left in the url to Carl Smith’s blog for your convenience. No more here.

Steve Sadlov

Ok what’s the emoticon construction of those? Gotta have them!

MarkR

#2 PaulM. Does this mean if I falsely accuse a false accuser falsely, I am unreliable? Or, if I’m truly accused by a sometimes false argument, but sometimes truly, then I am somehow false?

Gee, this is getting complicated, I prefer arguments, or statements that withstand falsification.

chuck c

#38

Obviously meant “stratospheric cooling” where I wrote “stratospheric warming”…sorry, that’s quite confusing.

MarkW

#18,

Anthony, be carefull, people might accuse you of dabbling in a certain, now forbidden concept.

David Smith

Good writeup on Weather Underground ( link ) on Cyclone Gonu, an unusual storm approaching Oman and Iran. It’s quite strong (cat 5 at one point) but appears to be weakening as it approaches land, which is normal. It may be only a cat 1 at landfall, but will carry the storm surge of a larger storm.

I’m sure there will be AGW/Gonu connections drawn, but the fact is that globally 2007 has been slightly below-normal on storms so far.

David Smith

Re #43 Sorry for this weather-not-climate interruption, but Gonu may develop into a tragic event, as it appears to be closer to Oman than forecast. This will bring considerable rain and storm surge into areas that have no history of large amounts of water, including villages situated in dry river beds. Gonu is weakening but not fast enough. It needs to veer north, and very soon.

jae

46: I like this part in your link.

Matt Bellamy, front man of the rock band Muse, labelled it “private jets for climate change”.

Jon

They must be. Often the filters are rather long, 40 years or so, and a 20 year shift that resulted would be readily apparent in the plots if they didn’t adjust for it.

Not always. Smaller filters are used, and I’ve seen a lot of misalignment of peaks and troughs which is exactly what you’d expect… ::shrugs::

I still want to hear from people who’ve been recreating published graphs.

Steve McIntyre

I can’t access http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html or http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov right now. Does anyone else have this problem?

Steve Sadlov

Weather not climate, but an interesting data point. Over the past few years, we seem to be experiencing various flavors of the Siberia Express (e.g. north to south flow, bringing unseasonable cold and possibly, wet conditions, to places in its path). Last year and the year before, the Express had a bead on California. We had cold springs which maintained “early spring” type conditions until the Solstice. We experienced multiple late season low elevation snow events. This year, the Express has mostly aimed further East, Coloradans can testify to this. However, for short periods, the Express has resumed its more Western mode. We can blame / thank it for a series of low elevation snow events – and when it morphed for a few weeks into the Mackenzie Express, for our severe freeze during January and early February. It’s back again, for a couple of days:

“FXUS66 KMTR 051545
AFDMTR

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO CA
845 AM PDT TUE JUN 5 2007

.DISCUSSION…A DEEP TROUGH (ESPECIALLY FOR JUNE) OFF THE COAST
CONTINUES TO BECOME NEGATIVELY TILTED AS IT MOVES TO THE COAST. A JET
STREAK NOTED ON WATER VAPOR IMAGERY IS ENHANCING A FRONTAL BAND NOW
OVER THE SFO BAY AREA. AS THE BAND MOVES SOUTH TO THE MONTEREY BAY
AREA…AND WITH THE CONTINUATION OF THE NW UPSLOPE FLOW…THERE COULD
STILL BE A FEW SHOWERS THIS MORNING. IN FACT…THERE WAS MEASURABLE
RAIN SOUTH OF SAN FRANCISCO LAST NIGHT WITH LA HONDA RECORDING 0.07
INCHES AND MONTEREY AND SALINAS RECORDING A FEW HUNDREDTHS OF RAIN.
WILL BE UPDATING THE FORECAST FOR THIS POSSIBILITY. WILL ALSO TAKEOUT
THE MENTION OF FOG IN THE FORECAST…SINCE THERE IS NO MARINE
LAYER…AND ANY LOW CLOUDS WOULD BE SYNOPTIC DRIVEN. THE GRADIENT
PICTURE INDC A STRONG ONSHORE FLOW WITH SFO-SAC NOW AT 3.0 MB.

“TEMPS WILL REMAIN COOL TODAY INLAND WITH THE COLD AIR ALOFT MOVING
OVER THE DISTRICT. IN FACT…TEMPS WILL BE FAIRLY HOMOGENEOUS
TODAY…MORE IN LINE WITH EARLY SPRING.”

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

In my mind’s eye, I view the generally crummy springs we’ve had in California as indicators of a sort. We had warmer, earlier springs, during the 70s and 80s. The early 90s were a mixed bag. The late 90s to present have been a bum steer. ENSO and PDO likely factor into it. But is there something with an even longer wavelength?

jae

54, Steve S: Yeah, here in SW Oregon, we had summer (90s) two days ago; now we are back to the low 60s. It’s just probably all that “whipsawing” of climate that Hansen talks about. Damn CO2.

Jonathan Schafer

#53,

Steve, I wonder if that eastern push to the Siberian Express has been partially responsible for the unusually wet spring we’ve had here in TX. I’ve lived here for 10 years and never experienced a spring like this. Tremendous rainfall and few days into the 90’s and here it is early June. Of course, we are coming off an extremly serious drought in N Central TX over the past 2 years, so I’m extremely happy with all the rain, filling up the lakes and reserviors.

With the end of El Nino and the beginning of La Nina, I had expected this spring to be warm and dry, followed by an extremely hot and dry summer. This now appears not to be the case. In fact, several long term forecasts for TX indicate above average precip and normal temps. Having lived through a number of extremely hot summers here (temps up to 112 in 98), I look forward to having a normal summer and actually getting some summer precip (although remains to be seen). The big question right now is whether the Mexican plume will settle over us for an extended period of time this summer as it has in years past, or whether it will periodically retrograde allowing clouds/rain chances to increase during those times.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #56 – In the Great Lakes region, there have been many cold fronts coming straight down from Hudson Bay. I’ve noticed lots of persistent deep cold lows over the Bay as well. Some of these fronts are coming down so straight to the South that at their Western ends they are actually moving toward the SSW. There, they are running into the Express. Ergo, the soggy plains.

Matthew Drabik

#53

Steve S,

Since climate is weather averaged over 30 years, I believe you made climate observation. Disclaimer was unneeded.

JP

#59

David Smith

The May, 2007 Arctic ice extent time series is here . As indicated, this May was not the lowest, or second lowest, year. May is an important month for ice extent because of the large amount of sunshine entering the Arctic.

The May Antarctic ice extent time series is here . The series is trendless, but the 2007 value is curious when compared to the Cryosphere Today plot ( link ). The Cryosphere chart seems to show a May, 2007 about 0.5MM km2 above the 1979-2000 average yet the NSIDC time series seems to show 2007 as below-average.

John Lang

Some of the weather being experienced in Texas is probably related to the current colder than average sea surface temperatures around North America and La Nina (which looks to have strengthened again last week.)

Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Last Week

David Smith

Pardon this weather-not-climate interruption but Cyclone Gonu took just about the worst possible path for the people of Oman. It is passing immediately along their coast ( map ) which creates storm surge and heavy mountain rains in places where those are unfamiliar. The only good news is that the cyclone weakened considerably down to around a cat 2 as it neared land.

Andrey Levin

Eugenio Hackbart, Chief Meteorologist for MetSul Weather Center, a private weather center located in Sao Leopoldo, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/TheGreatSouthAmericanMayColdSpell.doc

“May 2007 will go to history as one of the coldest starts to climatic winter ever observed in South America. A brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow and major energy disruption. The death toll for the 10-day cold wave was the highest for any single weather event in Argentina in recent history. Authorities confirmed 34 deaths directly or indirectly linked to the polar air incursion.

The cold snap led to electricity and natural gas shortages, idling factories and taxis and causing sporadic blackouts in Argentina, according to press reports. Millions of residents fired up space heaters, straining Buenos Aires’ electrical grid for three nights and forcing authorities to slash power supply nationwide and briefly cut domestic natural gas provisions and exports to Chile. Many factories went idle when distributors shut off or reduced gas supplies to give priority to homes. Government regulators also ordered an 800-megawatt electricity cut nationwide for four hours, which led to sporadic blackouts in the capital Buenos Aires. Grumbling taxi drivers waited for hours in lines stretching several blocks to fill up their black-and-yellow cabs with scarce compressed natural gas. The shortages also had a ripple effect in neighboring Chile, where authorities scrambled to provide energy after Argentina slashed natural gas exports.”
“The record spell is an evidence that natural variability of the SSTs in the Pacific have a major role in South America’s Southern Cone temperature. La Nià±a conditions are historically associated with severe winters or extreme cold events. During the month of May typical La Nià±a conditions were observed in the Pacific, mainly in the Nià±o 1+2 region that has a profound repercussion in Southern Brazil temperature and rainfall regime. The last 50 years show that the most important cold spells in Southern Brazil occurred under La Nià±a conditions. The great cold waves of 1955, 1957, 1965, 1975, 1984, 1988, 1994, 1999, 2000 and 2007 all took place under La Nià±a events or cooling of the Nià±o 1+2 region.

The same can be applied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The most important cold eruptions to reach Southern Brazil during the last 60 years were observed during negative periods of the PDO as 1955, 1957, 1965, 1975 and 2000. Regarding rain regime, the most catastrophic flooding took place during periods of strong positive signal in the Equatorial accompanied by positive values of the PDO as in 1941, 1983 and 1997.

All those historical cold events in Southern Brazil illustrated in the photos (1957, 1965, 1975, 1984, 1996 and 2006) have another aspect in common. They all took place around the 11-year Sun cycle solar minimum
As the Sun is under the solar minimum of this cycle now in 2007 its is not a surprise this major cold spell in May here in the Southern Hemisphere. History proves that there were always extreme cold events near or at the solar minimum in the recent decades in Southern Brazil. As there is no surprise to see South Africa also facing record breaking low temperatures as well as Australia and New Zealand in 2006. Australia, by the way, was an amazing site for extreme weather events last year and one astonishing episode was the snowstorm observed during the Christmas period in the higher grounds of the country last December. The firemen that were facing brutal forest fires suddenly were whitened by snow and not ashes. As the Pacific is still in negative phase, the PDO monthly values are near zero and the Sun is under its decadal solar minimum (graphic below), more extreme cold weather events should be expected in the coming months in the Southern Hemisphere.”

P.S. Next “unprecedented” cold snap is expected on July 7, when NBC will air 75 hours of Al Gore “Climate in Crisis” concerts.

ALLAN AMES

Is the whole AGW concept a modeling error? What am I missing about CO2 heat absorption?

Could I get some help from Steve and Climate Audit bloggers? (I think this post is in the spirit of auditing the work of climate models.)

Many threads ago jae was wondering about the magnitude of the effect on temperature of doubling CO2, and I felt the need to undertake a calculation for myself. Under the AGW model, the first step is for CO2 to block heat radiation. I therefore asked myself, what is the loss in transmission due to CO2. Eventually I was forced to the HITRAN data base, and found there that the transmittance of CO2 is a set of narrow lines. The consequence of narrow lines is that the lines rapidly saturate and permit photons to pass unmolested. My first round calculation with 0.5/cm wavenumber rectangular intervals shows almost complete saturation at 70 ppmv CO2, with 45% transmission and mostly saturated at 30ppmv. (T=55%) I may be off by heaven knows how many factors, but the phenomenon of rapid saturation should follow from the narrow absorption lines, and the 45% transmission should also persist. If this result is correct, there is no AGW phenomenon.

Are there some other broadening or interaction effects I do not understand? What do actual measurements show? (There seem to be precious few.)

M. Simon

OK. I’m going to bite the astr*logy thing and risk banning.

It seems that reliable ionosphere predictions re: short wave communications can be made by the relative positions of the Earth Mars and Jupiter.

Not directly pertinent but interesting. Currents in space affect earth weather:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0913_Connection_Found_Between_Earth_and.html

A cursory search did not turn up the “astr*logy” connection to the ionosphere. I believe I read the piece in Analog Magazine 20 or 30 years ago in a science fact article. I’ll report back if I find a reference.

I found it here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=820#comment-46887

With cites.

CA is the best!

Let me quote a bit from the CA comment linked above:

J.H. Nelson received acclaim from people all over the globe – from those who are interested about what is happening in the earth’s ionosphere. The acclaim is the result of Mr. Nelson’s achievement of 85% accuracy in predicting magnetic storms affecting radio signals. In this book, long awaited by the scientific community, Mr. Nelson discusses in detail his unique method of charting planetary angles to make his predictions. J.H. Nelson became the president of RCA.”

An interesting test for scientists is whether they are prepared to look into Nelson’s work from a scientific viewpoint. Unlike certain other scientists, Nelson provided his data and methods, and it has turned out that they are indeed replicable. However, we can anticipate that many “scientists” will dismiss his work as “astr*logy” or similar pejorative terms, without bothering to actually look at the work.

I’ll blog this and give a link here (or some where on this blog) when I’m done.

Climate is much more complicated than the IPCC scientists even imagine.

Nasif Nahle

# 73

Allan Ames:

Although I’ve not revised your numbers, you’re right. AGW does not exist, only Natural Global Warming (NGW). I invite you to check this formula to calculate the equivalence of heat absorbed by any substance (CO2 for this case) to see that at a higher density of CO2 the warming decreases:

ΔT = q/m (Cp)

Where Δ T is the change of temperature, q is the heat absorbed, m is the volumetric mass of the substance, and Cp is the specific heat of the substance. Due to a limit in the bands of absorption of CO2, q would increase as we increase temperature (that’s the logic); however, for CO2, as we increase temperature, his absorptivity decreases. For example, at 500 R, its absorptivity is of 0.142, but, if you increase the temperature to 540 R then the absorptivity of CO2 decreases to 0.112, and at 550 R it decreases to 0.085. This phenomenon is correlated with the bands of absorption of the CO2 and of any material. Steam behaves differently.

In the formula ΔT = q/m (Cp) the higher the mass of the substance, the lower ΔT will be:

We have now 0.00069 Kg/m^3 of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we double the mass, that is up to 0.00138, the heat absorbed by the CO2 will decrease because of the saturation of the bands of absorption of the gas. This condition makes the CO2 has a limited absorptivity of heat, then q could remain unaltered, while m(Cp) will be a higher number.

Assume that the heat absorbed by the current mass of CO2 is 0.0096 calories and that m(Cp) of CO2 is 0.291 (0.00069 x 421.13 cal). Dividing 0.0096 by 0.291 the change of temperature is 0.033 K. Now we will double the volumetric mass of CO2 to 0.00138 Kg/m^3. The heat absorbed must decrease by the saturation of the absorption bands, but we will concede the same value of 0.0096. We will assume the same thing for the Cp, which would increase as the density increases. The product m(Cp) is 0.5812. Now divide 0.0096 by 0.5812 and the change of temperature will be 0.017 K.

You can calculate the change of temperature taking into account the decrease of the heat absorbed and the increase of the carbon dioxide specific heat (Cp) as the density of CO2 increases.

MarkW

#77,

Wouldn’t we get the same effect by just spreading him out thin enough, all over the globe?
This method has the side benefit that we wouldn’t have to sit through any more pictures with him as the star.

ALLAN AMES

RE: 73 Thanks for the thoughts.

It does seem true that vibrational ground states could depopulate and make the gas even more transparent, and I agree that Cp will go up as this happens, though I don’t know how much.

But there are still several pieces missing, and the more I think about it the more complicated it gets, much like real science.

jae

71:

All those historical cold events in Southern Brazil illustrated in the photos (1957, 1965, 1975, 1984, 1996 and 2006) have another aspect in common. They all took place around the 11-year Sun cycle solar minimum

Right on!

jae

Is Gore on the West Coast?

David Smith

Ongoing revision of US climate history:

1999 graphic from NOAA

2007 graphic from NOAA

Note how the 1930s and 1940s change relative to the 1980s and 1990s. “Adjustments” continue apace.

Jon

Mark writes:

I’ve given some thought to the causal/acausal filter argument w.r.t. comm systems, btw, and I’ll probably post in an appropriate thread at some point.

I don’t exactly agree with all the attention this causal/acausal detail is getting. It isn’t particularly interesting or relevant. The filters under discussion are simply being used to enhance the signal to the noise ratio.

What is interesting is: the filter’s frequency response can distort the graph in misleading ways.

I remember a picture very distinctly from one of my college textbooks. They took a grayscale image and took its 2-D fourier transform.
1) They showed another image with the same phase data but where all the frequency components had been given the same amplitude.
2) They showed another image with the same magnitude data but where all the phase components had been equalized.

#1 was recognizable as the same image. #2 was not.

Nasif Nahle

Last week in the News (I don⳴ remember the Media) the IPCC (I hope these initials don’t be banned by the relationship of the panel with magic) reported that the forcing of heat by CO2 was 1.74 W/m^2. Since the thermal properties of this gas, the heat forcing given by the IPCC would correspond to 73136 ppmv of CO2 alone… Thatⳳ a great magic because the current concentration of CO2 is 381 ppmv. Could someone here explain me this?

Jos Verhulst

Here is a comment (in French) on the climateprediciton.net experiment.

Spot the Hockey Stick #9: Andrew Weaver

Main observations:

– with the CO2 concentration kept constant, a model can both remain stable or tumble into instability, in function of the parameter values that it is fed with (figures 1 and 2, resp.)
– using parameter values inducing a stable regime, doubling of the CO2 concentration can lead to both warmer or colder climates (fig. 3 and 4)
– focusing on the stable’ simulations, the global temperature could rise with 6°C degrees within the next 30 years, but it could also dive down by 6°C or more (figures 5 and 6).

jae

The head of NASA has changed his tune.

ALLAN AMES

jae (92)
How about Global Cooling?

Nasif is saying there is no CO2 effect. Unless someone can show me how a continuum IR absorption develops as it does from water polymers, and not just broadening, I think it is true that there is no CO2 “radiative forcing”. For SM (95) so long as the absorption lines are discrete, there will be holes in the IR spectrum, and the radiative coupling will be diminished (to zero) beyond just a simple albedo effect. There is no way for the CO2 to interact with the radiation field. But CO2 could be excited by collisions, and radiate heat, thereby enhancing cooling.

Has anyone EXPERIMENTALLY demonstrated increased heat absorption with
increasing CO2 in a relevant range of quantities? I bet they have not.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #96 – To do the experiment right you’d have to, as one among many rules, somehow have descreasing density toward the top of the test chamber. At the first approximation, it’s a well mixed gas within a spheroidal-shell-shaped volume enclosing an IR radiating “grey body” sphere responding to diurnal ingress of the full solar spectrum. But in reality, the spheroidal shell has pressure of all its contained gasses decreasing with radius including CO2. Also, in reality, at any particular instant, the CO2 is not really well mixed, and is, instead, of a highly complex distribution of concentration as a result of highly uneven distribution and output of sources. Further complicating things is the fact that the weather and stratification within the troposphere can result in the two extremes of inversion trapped CO2 and rapidly dispersed CO2. It would be one heck of an experiment to really look at CO2’s interactions with IR in an atmospherically meaningly experimental design.

jae

96, 98: Why couldn’t you simply evacuate a chamber and introduce known amounts of CO2, heat the chamber with an IR source (inside the chamber), and study the effects of CO2 concentration on equilibrium temperature? If the CO2 is absorbing and re-emitting energy, the amount of IR (temperature) in the chamber should increase with increasing CO2 concentration. I don’t see why you need to replicate Earth to study whether CO2 exerts a greenhouse effect at various concentrations. (There’s probably some elementary thing wrong with my logic here, since it’s too simple).

richardT

#99
And don’t forget to account for the turbulence caused by butterflies.

jae

102: Could you tell me just what types of policies are going to make any difference, anyway? Especially if China and India do not have similar policies. Do you think we can cut CO2 emissions enough to do any good and still have a decent standard of living? And can you tell me why C02 emissions FOLLOWED temperature changes by about 800 years in the past? And can you explain what caused the Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Holocene Maximum, etc.? And why it did not take “a few hundred thousand years” to “recover” from these pertubations?

jae

Is anyone else here old enough to remember these things?

Yes.

Steve Sadlov

I vaguely recall this issue with an FTIR system we had at one of me earlier employers.

Steve McIntyre

#96.

Simplifying a lot, radiation from well-saturated infrared bands will not escape the earth unless emitted from a particular height in the atmosphere. Add more greenhouse gas, and this height increases slightly. But the higher level is colder, and therefore radiates less energy. To get back into radiation balance, the earth needs to warm up enough to warm that slightly higher and colder layer to the same temperature as the previous layer.

This is a reasonable summary of Houghton’s exposition of how AGW works. One of the remarkable defects of the four IPCC reports is that they lack any exposition of the basic infrared. I suggested to Mike MacCracken that the present AR include such an exposition long before the structure was set in stone, but they didn’t bother. There is no exposition in any of the IPCC reports of this sort of “elementary” issue, of great interest to anyone trying to educate themselves.

One issue that bothers me about the higher-the colder argument (and I’ll think about putting up a thread for this) is that in the stratosphere, it gets warmer with height and much of the CO2 emission to space in the “big bands” is at the tropopause or stratosphere so that the the higher-the colder argument doesn’t apply to this portion.

Another thing that I don’t understand is: what if there was warming in the upper atmosphere so that it kept pace with increasing altitude of CO2 radiation to space. That’s mathematically possible, although I don’t know about the physics. If that happened, why couldn’t one have a situation where the effect of additional CO2 was substantially contained to changes at altitude – real enough changes, but not necessarily consequential. They argue that the lapse rate is inflexible, something that relates also to water vapor feedbacks. An article was suggested in a thread a while back by a young prof from Arizona who was involved with the Mass-EPA case and maybe someone can refresh this thread with that reference.

Nasif Nahle

# 111

Steve McIntyre,

If that happened, why couldn’t one have a situation where the effect of additional CO2 was substantially contained to changes at altitude – real enough changes, but not necessarily consequential.

There is another problem with altitude: As we diminish the pressure, the emissivity of CO2 also diminishes, but logarithmically. This could interfere with the transfer of heat to the layers of the upper atmosphere. I think this is the reason by which the middle and upper troposphere are colder than the lower troposphere.

# 92

Jae,

The simple and straight things make the calculi appallingly correct. I’m sure the IPCC experts know all about this, but I think that they cannot disclose it because the AGW irrefutable hypothesis would collapse for ever. The value 73136 ppmv makes a 6.7%, which fits more with the atmospheric concentration of steam at a given time, when the surface of oceans gets warmer or when there is mist over a certain area, than to the tropospheric CO2 density.

I know that the algorithm is pretty simple, but I posted it here (the algorithm) for you can test it. You’ll find that it is awfully correct.

# 98

Allan Ames

Me either. I also trust in facts.

Nasif Nahle

# 70

Bob Weber,

I agree. There were times in the past of Earth when the tropospheric CO2 was > 2050 ppmv, for example, in the Permian (some 290 million years ago) and in the Paleocene (about 65 million years ago). In the Eocene, 50 million years ago, the density of CO2 was over 3000 ppmv, and we were already on Earth, but without oil, fire, cars, etc.

DeWitt Payne

#111

If RC really wanted to do something useful to educate rather than proselytize the masses, they would construct a general FAQ on Physical Meteorology and Climatology. There was a really good FAQ for the USENET newsgroup discussing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series that could provide a model of how to do it right. You could hyperlink each chapter with more detail and math so it would be possible for anyone to gain something. Where the understanding is poor, all sides should be represented with their best arguments. I’m not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.

As far as the temperature of the stratosphere, my current understanding is that at the tropopause upwelling longwave radiation essentialy decouples and is no longer absorbed because of the low concentration of absorbers at that altitude and above. There is also no significant convection so the lower stratosphere is isothermal. The upper stratosphere warms with altitude because of absorption of shortwave UV by oxygen and ozone, I think.

I’m also entirely unconvinced that the lapse rate is constant under all scenarios. If it were, then the upper troposphere couldn’t possibly warm faster than the surface and lower troposphere. It also isn’t constant with latitude because humidity has a major effect on lapse rate.

John Baltutis

Ooops! #118 Cut & Paste error.

That should read

I.e., 50% questionable measurements and 50% model outputs. Now, they’re half-way there. In 2010, I predict that they’ll use 25% so-called historical data and 75% model outputs. And, in 2012, 100% model outputs.

S. Hales

#118 Just wondering how that article would read if you substituted economists for climatologists. 🙂

#117 The troposphere warms by convection and conduction the stratosphere warms by conduction except the lapse rate is inverse to the troposphere. The tropopause is the point of thermal equilibrium between the two and seems that this point would vary in height given a change in the GWP of the atmosphere as would the lapse rate by definition. A constant lapse rate seems unlikely to me.

MarkW

#95,

Read the article, not just the headline. The head of NASA has apologized for the furor he caused, but he hasn’t changed his opinnion.

MarkW

It takes hundreds of thousands of years for effects to reverse? Why has this particular rule never been invoked before?
It only took a few decades for the warming of the MWP to reverse. Other warming periods in the past have also reversed themselves much more quickly.

I also notice that it is very permissable for AGW proponents to say things that are grossly innaccurate, but designed to scare. But AGW critics have to be spot on perfect in everything they say, otherwise they are to be ignored.

Steve Milesworthy

#124

What is relevant is not the amount of absorption, but the change in the amount of absorption.

Broadened overlapping bands that are fully saturated will be proportionately less affected by an increase in concentration than narrow, none-overlapping bands. The centre of the narrow band will be fully saturated, but the sides of the band will not be. Double the amount of the gas, and these side-bands become more saturated. The narrower the saturated part, the more important the side band is.

I’ve found out that GCM schemes are parameterised due to computation cost. But they are validated against more precise formulations.

I would also like to find a high-level description of all of this.

Spence_UK

Re #114

I came across this as well, looks interesting. It doesn’t say global warming will result in fewer hurricanes though! They say nothing on this topic, but what they do say is that the recent hurricane activity in the atlantic basin is pretty ordinary in historical terms. The paper is in Nature (here) and has not received a great deal of press attention (no surprise there then). I haven’t read the original paper because I don’t have a nature sub.

Given the discussion of Curry, Webster etc. on this site it might be interesting to have a post on this at some point, Steve? If it does get any traction amongst sceptics, I wonder how quickly the RealClimate folks et al will embrace auditing?

Steve Milesworthy

“Coral luminescence” is used as a proxy for vertical wind sheer |Vz|

luminescence intensity in corals reflects the degree of terrestrial runoff, which is controlled by the amount of precipitation. Decreased precipitation in the northeastern Caribbean during the hurricane season is associated with increased trade-wind speed and high |Vz| over the MDR [Main Development Region]

Summary is:

Our results suggest that the frequency of major hurricanes since 1995 is not unusual, indicating that increases in SST during the past 270 years have been offset by increased |Vz|, which suppresses major hurricanes. A more rapid warming of the atmosphere relative to the ocean could have caused the anomalous calm period between the 1970s and 1990s. Air temperatures near the level of the trade-wind inversion (1.5 km) as well as 10 m air temperatures during the past 50 and 100 years, respectively, averaged over the Caribbean (see Supplementary Information), have risen faster than SSTs, indicating an enhanced stability of the lower atmosphere and a strengthening of the trade-wind inversion that reduces the influence of thermodynamic energy from a warmer ocean. This physical mechanism leads to enhanced subsidence, trade-wind strength and |Vz| in the MDR. The reconstructed |Vz| series may indicate that this trend has occurred over a longer period.

The future possibility of lower |Vz| combined with increased SSTs in the MDR (Figs 3 and 4) may result in longer storm lifetimes and more moist enthalpy to power developing tropical cyclones, causing higher hurricane frequencies and greater storm intensities.

Bob Meyer

Re: 125

Mark W said:

It takes hundreds of thousands of years for effects to reverse? Why has this particular rule never been invoked before?
It only took a few decades for the warming of the MWP to reverse. Other warming periods in the past have also reversed themselves much more quickly.

It seems that the AGW advocates have picked up on the “tipping point” idea. It goes “We have but a few moments left to act then we reach the point of no return when the planet becomes an inferno that will boil the blood in your veins”. It’s kind of like the 2:OO AM infomercial that says “act now, supplies are limited and you may never see this low price again” combined with a little “fire and brimstone” eschatology. The “tipping point” is just part of the AGW sales pitch.

Is there any science behind it? I find it hard to believe that such a point could exist and yet we haven’t reached it before due to natural variations in temperature.

Re: 56 Steve – Al Gore could give a whole new meaning to the phrase “The Iceman Cometh”.

Nasif Nahle

# 132

DeWitt Payne,

Then, how could we explain that the middle and upper tropospheric layers are colder than the lower layer? CO2, the main greenhouse gas has a capability to retain or store only 0.0051 W; however, the energy that causes the change of temperature of the lower tropospheric layer is almost 19 W. Obviously, the cause is not the dry air.

jae

125:

I also notice that it is very permissable for AGW proponents to say things that are grossly innaccurate, but designed to scare. But AGW critics have to be spot on perfect in everything they say, otherwise they are to be ignored.

This is what is really frustrating when dealing with zealots in our society. They are allowed (by the media and the uninformed public) to make unbelievably irresponsible and incorrect statements, with barely any reprecussions. Think Gore and Hansen here. But let an oil company make one incorrect statement, and it is considered a travesty worthy of the gallows.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #124 – That’s why I started to and continue to challenge hard core AGWers regarding the “blanket” model of CO2. Other than in cases where an inversion traps CO2 somewhere between 0 and a few thousand feet, it is not a blanket. It is a diminishing-with-altitude absolute number of molecules. You cannot model CO2 IR reradiation with a blanket of CO2. Apples and oranges.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #138 – Overall thermal resistance of every compound and element in the atmosphere undoubtedly factors into the realized thermal profile.

Steve Milesworthy

Nasif, your post in #77 seems to be talking about a one-off injection of infrared into a parcel of air, and the amount of heating it would cause.

But we’re really talking about an equilibrium state where the amount of IR in matches the amount of IR out. All the GHG argument is saying is that the extra CO2 slows down the amount of IR out until the atmosphere has warmed up a bit. The heat capacity of the atmosphere is not relevant for that sort of analysis.

Assume that the heat absorbed by the current mass of CO2 is 0.0096 calories and that m(Cp) of CO2 is 0.291 (0.00069 x 421.13 cal). Dividing 0.0096 by 0.291 the change of temperature is 0.033 K. Now we will double the volumetric mass of CO2 to 0.00138 Kg/m^3. The heat absorbed must decrease by the saturation of the absorption bands, but we will concede the same value of 0.0096. We will assume the same thing for the Cp, which would increase as the density increases. The product m(Cp) is 0.5812. Now divide 0.0096 by 0.5812 and the change of temperature will be 0.017 K.

You can calculate the change of temperature taking into account the decrease of the heat absorbed and the increase of the carbon dioxide specific heat (Cp) as the density of CO2 increases.

jae

143:

But we’re really talking about an equilibrium state where the amount of IR in matches the amount of IR out. All the GHG argument is saying is that the extra CO2 slows down the amount of IR out until the atmosphere has warmed up a bit. The heat capacity of the atmosphere is not relevant for that sort of analysis.

I think this is a good point. What bugs me is that there is also an ongoing attempt to establish equilibrium between the air and the surface. It seems to me that the AGW theory, with all the supposed water vapor feedback, is saying that it is possible for the air to become warmer than the surface, thus warming the surface some more. I don’t think this can happen. In the desert, the surface is far hotter than the air; in the tropics there is a near equilibrium. If I add a greenhouse gas to the desert (rainstorm), I add heat to the air via higher humidity/entropy, and perhaps I retain more heat in the air (less diurnal variation), but I don’t increase the temperature. It seems to me that here is something fundamentally wrong with the idea that adding greenhouse gases increases the temperature. They just add more entropy to the air.

jae

146: I agree with what you said. Water vapor (and CO2) help retain heat, but how do they RAISE THE TEMPERATURE? The sun raises the temperature and the GHGs help retain heat. It seems to me that that’s all they do and that they don’t ADD heat (temp). If they added heat, it would be hotter in July in Memphis than in Dagget, CA; but the reverse is true. IOW, I think the only positive forcing is from the Sun. And that’s why I think the sun will ultimately be shown to be responsible for all or nearly all of the climate changes.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #148 – I agree. Temperature is a secondary not primary measure regarding energy flux balances.

jae

150: LOL. I remember telling a meterologist friend of mine that I could do better than the weatherman by flipping a coin. He laughed and said, “no you can’t, because we are right 51% of the time.” Perhaps I was right.

Nasif Nahle

# 146, # 147

Jae, Steve,

What kind of desert are you talking about? There are high preassure deserts (example, Kalahari), rainshadow deserts (example, Great Basin desert) and fog deserts (example, Atacama desert). The climate conditions at each kind of desert are driven differently from one kind of desert to another.

I consider that so the absorptivity and emissivity as the transmissivity and reflectivity of the GHG are very important for demonstrating that the energy account is in equilibrium. The fact that the upper layers of the troposphere have a higher value of transmissivity than the layer immediately above the surface explains the dilemma and destroys the argument of a heat storehouse brandished by the AGWists. The heat absorbed by air causes the temperature of air raises; thus I wrote in BioCab’s site, if we do not apply heat to the pot, the fababeans never will cook. If the Sun had not anomalies in its activity, the Earth’s temperature would not have anomalies.

The AGWists argument affirm that the heat emitted by the lower troposphere is transferred to the higher layers of the troposphere and that from there it is “re-radiated” to the surface (the “blanket effect”); I agree on Jae’s argument that the heat cannot be transferred from the air (a colder system) to the surface (a warmer system). What I’m trying to explain is that the middle and upper layers of the troposphere have a transmissivity higher than the lower layer, and then the heat is transferred to the stratosphere and from there to the outer space almost without being absorbed in the middle and upper tropospheric layers. I think that we could not explain the thermal equilibrium without considering the thermal properties of matter.

Like an extra data, the pressure of the air layers at 18000 ft of height is of 0.5 atm. To this height, the air transmissivity is 0.93, which means that most of the heat radiated (not “re-radiated”) from the surface is dispersed THROUGH those air layers. Now, if the layers above 32.81 ft in altitude are colder than the layer below 32.81 ft in altitude, and the Earth surface is warmer than the tropospheric layer up to 32.81 ft in altitude from the surface, where the heat from the tropospheric layer below 32.81 ft in altitude would be transferred to? By the law of Entropy that Jae refers to, the heat will be dispersed towards the systems with a larger set of available microstates, to be precise, towards the coldest air layers. Since those colder and upper layers are not efficient to absorb heat, then the heat simply disperses towards the deep space and the gravity field, which are the hugest heat sinks.

Steve Milesworthy

#154
The fababeans will cook quicker when you put a lid on the pan because the only way of losing heat is to get hotter and produce more steam.

Each parcel of air emits heat radiation in all directions equally (up, down, sideways) according to the 4th power of its temperature. There is nothing in the laws of thermodynamics that state that a cold object cannot emit radiation towards a hot object. Thermodynamics only requires that the hot object is emitting more than it is receiving from the cold object.

Essentially then, each layer of the atmosphere is emitting radiation, and half of it is going towards the sky, and half towards the earth. A given photon may make it as far as the earth, or as far as space, or it may be absorbed by another layer. The probability of absorption is dependent on the distance it has to travel (to earth or space) and the amount of greenhouse gases (ignoring aerosols, clouds etc. for now).

Photons from higher layers, have more chance of getting to space (and thus cooling the earth), but increase the greenhouse gases and the probability drops slightly resulting in a reduction of the rate of photons getting to space. To increase the rate, you have to warm the layer.

DeWitt Payne

#135

Look up adiabatic expansion and potential temperature. That’s why the temperature in the troposphere decreases with altitude. The temperature would decrease with altitude even if there were no IR absorber/emitters to cause a greenhouse effect. The temperature gradient is also critical to the greenhouse effect. Here’s a link to some notes on Physical Meteorology:

Click to access PhysMetLectNotes.pdf

When you have read and understood those notes, plus maybe a refresher course in spectroscopy since you clearly don’t understand the concept of band saturation, ask me again. Sorry to sound like RC here, but we clearly don’t have some basic concepts in common.

jae

159: Yes the ENTHALPY is much higher, due to storage of heat by all that water. But the AGWers are conflating this with TEMPERATURE. Somehow, the increased enthalpy is not being translated into increased temperature.

Reference

Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases

The study appears this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Dirty snow has had a significant impact on climate warming since the Industrial Revolution. In the past 200 years, the Earth has warmed about .8 degree Celsius. Zender, graduate student Mark Flanner, and their colleagues calculated that dirty snow caused the Earth’s temperature to rise .1 to .15 degree, or up to 19 percent of the total warming.

jae

161: Of course, heat accumulates. What’s the point?

163: I took the course, but it’s been a loooooong time ago.

Nasif Nahle

# 155

Steve Milesworthy,

The fababeans will cook quicker when you put a lid on the pan because the only way of losing heat is to get hotter and produce more steam.

And the pan will get hotter without a source of heat? Wow! I want one of those!

Each parcel of air emits heat radiation in all directions equally (up, down, sideways) according to the 4th power of its temperature.

Air emits heat radiation in all directions, but not equally. The constant of proportionality for natural systems is not the same for layers facing up than for layers facing down. The factor of correction also is different if comparing layers facing up with layers facing up. The horizontal heat transfer by convection is not equal to the vertical heat transfer by convection because the first is limited by the molecular displacements.

# 158

DeWitt Payne,

Thank you so much by the link. Did you write it? It’s very interesting, it says the same than I, but in more simple words. What does RC mean? Remember that my English is not as fluent as the heat is.

The temperature would decrease with altitude even if there were no IR absorber/emitters to cause a greenhouse effect.

Is this a puzzle or what? How could you increase-decrease the temperature if there is not a medium that absorbs-emits heat? Basic thermodynamics.

James Erlandson

Re 165 David Smith:
The article was noted in OpinionJournal.

We were wondering just how much global temperatures went up between 2005 and 2006, so we checked with NASA. It turns out the average global temperature actually declined by 0.09 degrees centigrade. Maybe the cats had to go into heat to keep warm.

Nasif Nahle

# 155
[snip – Nasef – I have a local rule that I don’t want people discussing entropy and thermodynamics on this blog. I realize that you’re a new poster and the reasons are because of old events. But I’ve found that most such discussion produces more heat than light and wish to discourage it here. Sorry about that.., Steve]

Jaye

Hope he makes the show.

jae

170: OK, Steve, but that is patently biased and unfair.

Nasif Nahle

# 169

Steve Sadlov,

Yes, Steve, I agree, but the patterns are not the same from one kind of desert to another. That makes the differences on pluvial precipitation patterns, humidity, prevalent temperatures, etc.

For example, a high pressure desert climate depends on (or of?) the patterns of the winds that cause permanent zones of high and low pressures; for example, Equatorial hot and humid winds that ascend, get colder, discharge their humidity and go toward the poles descending -by a higher density- on tropical latitudes -between 15° and 30°; a rainshadow desert climate is modified by geological features (such as mountains) that force the wind upwards when it strikes on them (on the mountains); a fog desert climate is modified by cold oceanic currents that run from the poles to the tropics along the western coastlines.

SidViscous

Dave thans

Was going to post they kitten article in re-payment but you beat me to it.

Nasif Nahle

# 166

To myself,

The factor of correction also is different if comparing layers facing up with layers facing up.

It must say: “The factor of correction also is different if comparing layers facing up with layers facing down“.

K

#179. The actual intent probably drifted as Reuters prepared this story.

I think they are saying that plsnners of all sorts will find it simpler and more accurate to use the new scheme.

But it does sound marvelous to have a method which has already proved accurate for the decades ahead.

MarkW

Something about the concept of a flamewar over thermodynamics seems oddly appropriate.

MarkW

If CO2 is such an all powerfull warming agent, wouldn’t the fact that cities have much higher CO2 concentrations than do surrounding rural areas (after all, cities are where most of the CO2 is being produced) result in cities have a much higher CO2 induced AGW?

If increasing the entire world to 380ppb of CO2 is going to result in entire world warming by 3 to 10 degrees C, (depending on which model you decide to believe (worship?)), wouldn’t the fact that many cities clock in at 500 to 1000 ppb CO2 already result in an easily measureable increase in their temperature? And shouldn’t this increase be adjusted out of the urban data?

jae

187: Err, how about the supposed water vapor feedback?

Nasif Nahle

# 187

RichardT,

In each exhalation, a human being expels a volume of air which composition is 5% carbon dioxide. To get the equivalence in mg/m^3 units, we have to use the next formula:

mg/m^3 = ppmv (12.187) (MW) / 273.15 K (+ ΔT °C of body temperature)

How much ppmv are contained by the 5% of CO2 in the composition of the air into the lungs before the next exhalation?

5% of CO2 in lungs air = 54419 ppmv.

How many kg of CO2 are equivalent to 54419 ppmv in 2.7 liters of air before being exhalated?

54419 ppmv of CO2 = 0.086 Kg of CO2

Fortunately, the heat emitted by CO2 is not absorbed by CO2 and the CO2 internal energy plus the product of its Partial Pressure and Volume is not released like… heat. Otherwise… we would be toasted from the inside.

richardT

#190
What’s this got to do with the price of fish?

jae

190, Nasif:

Fortunately, the heat emitted by CO2 is not absorbed by CO2 and the CO2 internal energy plus the product of its Partial Pressure and Volume is not released like… heat. Otherwise… we would be toasted from the inside.

???. Are you referring to the equation: T = PV/nR?

Stan Palmer

There is an intereting juxitiposition of stories in the Times of London today

Firstly, the times reports that AGW is the big story in the US now:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article1901634.ece

However reality intrudes with this story:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1906926.ece

Media hysteria as Paris Hilton faces justice

This contains the following passage:

News channels abandoned all coverage of the G8 summit, before reluctantly tearing themselves away from the live coverage of Hilton’s front door to report, briefly, that America’s top general had resigned. And now back to the “breaking news” on Paris Hilton, where an excited TV reporter was pointing out the expensive homes of nearby celebrities such as Rod Stewart and Britney Spears, adding: “Some of the houses date back to the 1920s!”

AGW at the G8 is the big story on a slow news day. Then something really important happens and all the channels cover it.

This shows the depth of the AGW hysteria. it is of the same ilk as the Paris Hilton story but not as intense. Maybe Al Gore should walk around without underwear.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #176 – Let’s say we flattened out all the mountains in the Western USA. The desert zone would change very little in extent, in fact, it might actually expand. Why? Because much of the rainfall near the West Coast is orographic. One mnemonic that is useful here are rainfall amounts at the immediate coastline in areas where there are no mountains right along the coast: San Francisco – 20 in / yr, Monterey – 17 in / yr, Santa Maria – 13 in / yr, San Diego – 9 in / yr. Taking the 10 in average annual precip line, and factoring in the persistent Pacific High and semi persistent Highs over north central Mexico and the 4 corners region, one can then imagine that the 10 in contour, in my flat version of the US West, would start somewhere around Los Angeles, run in a slow arc up to somewhere around Salt Lake City, then arc back down to a point near the Rio Grande mouth, arcing into the middle of Mexico, then arcing out into the Pacific somewhere around Mazatlan. A mini Sahara. So, while many assume that the rainshadow effect is the main driver of aridity in the SW US, it’s simply not so. Even without the topography, most of the US SW would be a desert.

Joe Ellebracht

Orographic

Related to, or caused by, physical geography (such as mountains or sloping terrain).

Nasif Nahle

# 194

Jae,

Yes, have you made the calculi? The result would be very interesting.

Nasif Nahle

Oops! Sorry, richardT… I twisted the posts. My post # 190 was not for you. Sorry.

John Baltutis

John A.

Attempted to post a link to the Exponential Growth in Physical Systems #2 thread WRT to the Jacob Ystrom, Heinz-Otto Kreiss 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes paper, but something in it is getting caught by the spam blocker. I had no problem posting a few minutes ago to The Vose and Karl Response to Davey and Pielke 2005 thread. Could you take a look.

Filippo Turturici

I would ask you all for a matter.
Does anyone know why land temperatures continue to stay at high levels or even to grow, while sea temperatures are slowly decreasing in last years?
It may seem odd, but the T growth of just 30% of World surface is enough to mantain World T stable in last years, despite 70% of World surface (the seas) is mainly cooling – to give you an example just of last two months, World TT (at least for NCDC and GISS) mantain very high despite Nino was replaced by Nina, or N Atlantic TT fell well below their normal values for large part of this area.

On North Atlantic temperatures: they really suddenly dropped in last weeks off south-east USA coast (they are now about 2°C below average), while they have been very low off Canadian coast since months; in the same time, temperatures are dropping even near to Europe.
Someone here is really afraid that Gulf Current is shutting down (a very strong Labrador current for months, followed by such drop just in the “spine” of the Current, which seems to be enlarging toward east); and an Italian web meteorologist and climatologist wrote a week ago, just before this larger alarm, that the Current was slowing down sensibly and then we are about to see (from how he told it, it seems to be even for the next months and not only years) a major European climate cooling, overall during winter months.

T J Olson

Re David Smit & Steve Sadlov’s notices of La Nina earlier in this edition of “Unthreaded,” I have bit of not-so cold water for you.

Local papers (Summit [County] Daily, Wednesday June 6th) report that Karl Wolters, a NOAA (Boulder) climatologist frequently quoted locally on seasonal weather patterns, says the incipient La Nina is now negligible.

Earlier predictions called for a shift to La Nià±a conditions this spring, with cooler than average ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific. That pattern often brings a hot and dry spring and summer to western Colorado. But the latest forecast models show little movement toward La Nià±a, Wolter said. “We’re sort of getting to the end of the period where you can get into a rapid onset (of La Nià±a),” Wolter said.

Now, is this purely a local matter? Or regionally significant? Or nationally/continentally consequental? And what’s further in store? I’ll await your further weigh-ins! Thanks.’€¨

T J Olson

re 210
That’s “Klaus” Wolters, not “Karl.” Me bad.

Steve McIntyre

#208. How the major temperature indices (HadCRU especially) go from raw measurements to their final index is a bit of a mystery. HadCRU has so far refused to even identify the land stations, although Willis’ FOI is making some progress on that. The SSTs may be even more complicated.

jae

202: Nasif, Steve M does not want discussions of thermodynamics here at this time. Can you suggest another blog where we can discuss this?

Filippo Turturici

#213: I think that these climatologists should better study La Palice…of course European climate is warmer because winds are mainly westerly: they pass over a mild ocean! If they pass over a cooler ocean, then temperatures would drop by some degree – as they say, we are far from catastrophic scenarios, but I do not know who (outside movies or newspapers) called for UK to have the same climate of Newfoundland. And look just at that map: mild temperatures reach northern areas in Atlantic than in Pacific – but do they know that Norway has always been free by ice sea, or they think that seeing an ice sheet still far north than Scotland but reaching Hammerfest would be normal?
Their opinion is really odd: e.g. they predict a few degrees cooling but not reaching Little Ice Age levels: I would really like to ask them if they know that LIA was not a real ice age as they suggest, and that frost on English coast was still very rare (maybe they misunderstand river freezing with sea freezing – but what climatologist or oceanographer would do it? – or that they think that ice on some Northern Sea coast can be only a LIA event – so winter 2003 came directly from LIA?). A few degrees cooling on a continental average is just the Little Ice Age values, maybe a bit less or even more cooling (we should indeed find how many few degrees).
Sorry, but I find this position not only odd but also offensive: dismissing Gulf Current is simply a non-sense – as saying that Atlantic will freeze to England, or using such a non-sense phrase to dismiss possible changes.
I say once more: in Europe, winter arctic ice sheets exist only at Svalbard, something like 80°N; in Newfoundland, it reaches the same latitudes of Northern France; we are talking about winter temperature differences of 10-15°C at the same latitude and at the same sea level, not of few degrees. This is the effect of Gulf Current: slowing it down would not mean that we will have the same climate of Eastern Canada, but it could still bring sensible changes to what we are used, even if Arctic winter sea ice would not block UK, because countries like Northern Norway or Iceland could see much more ice than usual, or we could see the Baltic to freeze to Denmark usually (and not just once or twice a decade), or bigger and longer cold snaps to North-Western Europe (UK climate is so mild during winter that places far south but east, like Northern Italy, or Romanian coast, are some degree colder – also, e.g. the coast of Vancouver is colder).
We are talking of just some degree, not “The day after tomorrow”: but, Europe warmed just by 1°C in 30 years on continental average – and I repeat once more, no one talked about Siberian scenarios in real discussions on Gulf Current slow-down, at least not here in Italy.
I think this position is just an opinion to support serrist-like theories: our World will surely warm more everytime and everywhere, and nothing else is possible, not even just local cooling. As they try to dismiss Medieval Warm Period, as they try to demonstrate that temperature is always rising even when it is not, as they try to demonstrate that we live in the coldest periods of last millennia or even millions years (had to read even this and by supposed “scientists”), they now try to demonstrate that climate does not depends from seas, it is rather absurd.

David Smith

Final post for a while:

The sum of the current (June 9) Arctic sea ice anomaly plus the Antarctic anomaly is zero. In other words, global sea ice extent, at the moment, is at the 1979-2000 mean.

By the way, I’m becoming (like Steve Sadlov) increasingly curious about the reported sea ice extent data. Technology and methodology have changed a number of times over the satellite era. Apparently, the practice has been to overlap-and-graft methods, which can be quite difficult, especially when analyzing for small changes. It’s a topic to explore later this summer.

Nasif Nahle

# 216

Jae, I don’t know another blog besides this one. I’ve participated here just because a friend called my attention on CA. Please, tell me if you find another blog where we can talk about this topic.

ALLAN AMES

re:any AGW discussion: Water is the only green house gas on Planet Earth. CO2 and CH4 are not a greenhouse gases.

CAers, if Steve permits, please get ready to tell me where I am wrong — if we can agree on the physics we can put some serious holes in the AGW hypothesis.

Water has continuum bands in the IR. The existence of these bands means that within a coupled group of water molecules heat energy can be exchanged and delivered to the point in the system where energy density is lowest. Optically and thermally this makes water vapor something like a solid, a low viscosity carbon gray if you like.

Near room temperature, and temperature is a big issue, the IR bands of individual molecules are all saturated. For the 2300/cm CO2 lines, the population ration is ~e^10, so at room temperature all isolated molecules are essentially incapable of further interaction except maybe for some small scattering.

Atoms which are not part of a band structure are forced to hold their energy until they collide with a cooler molecule, or re-radiate their energy within their allowed energy levels. . Coupled molecules can move energy to the few remaining unexcited molecules, and dump energy into the few that have been deexcited, and so have different saturation characteristics than isolated molecules. That CO2 and CH4 have lines in the IR means nothing if these lines do not form heat conduction bands.

Because we do not often get to think about both excited state and band theory at the same time, I need to tell a story. A co-worker of mine once set up a very interesting experiment. Using a structurally rigid and therefore efficiently fluorescing dye, at concentrations high enough for broadening, he irradiated just below the crossover energy. We were surprised to find that the fluorescence spectrum was exactly normal even though we were irradiating well below the average fluorescence energy, much less the maximum. On irradiation, the system had selected a “hot” molecule and excited it. After excitation and fluorescence the hot molecule had been eliminated, and the system, on average, showed slight cooling by actual measurement. What a mind blower. I understand these were electronic, not vibrational couplings, but much of the quantum mechanics stays the same. I will look forward to the discussion. Nasif: thanks for the encouragement.

David Archibald

Re 215, is there any way of finding out what cloud cover has been doing this year, in that it may be associated with this cooling?

MarkR

SteveM

I know you don’t like off the chosen topics postings on CO2 and thermodynamics etc, but wouldn’t it at least be worth having designated threads for these topics akin to the Exponential Growth one, or at least another recognised location. Some brilliant posts are being made on these topics and at the moment they are being lost, because there is no focus for them.

Peter Lloyd

Something’s gone wrong – only half my post appeared! Try again –

re: ongoing CO2/IR absorption debate

I’ve thought myself round and round in circles on this subject for several years now. For a start, I can’t understand why it’s not given priority at IPCC with a committee dedicated to it – it is the central issue, after all.

I have a question which shows my ignorance but what the hell – just illuminate me.

Contributions to this thread so far show that CO2 IR absorbance bands are fully saturated at comparatively low ppmv –

jae

228 says:

I know you don’t like off the chosen topics postings on CO2 and thermodynamics etc, but wouldn’t it at least be worth having designated threads for these topics akin to the Exponential Growth one, or at least another recognised location. Some brilliant posts are being made on these topics and at the moment they are being lost, because there is no focus for them.

There is a void here, Steve. You could fill it.

Nasif Nahle

Steve McIntyre, please, if you allow a bit of thermodynamics in the unthreaded 12, I could promise you that I won’t touch quantum mechanics. I think no one here will touch it.

Richard Sharpe

Dirty Snow From Pollution Heating Up Arctic

Willis Eschenbach

Peter, per your post, I suspect the problem is the “less than” symbol, which the server interprets as the start of an HTML tag and goes off the rails.

I think you can use & l t (without the spaces), let me try … 2 &lt 3 …

w.

Willis Eschenbach

Nope, lost again.

w.

Andrey Levin

Re#236

I clearly remember 30-year old articles from Russian newspapers reporting “new victory of human mind” over “dark forces of nature”. Couple of experiments indicated that spraying carbon particles (grinded coal or charcoal) over river’s ice in Siberia lead to earlier ice melt and about 7-10 days earlier start of navigation season on Great Siberian Rivers flowing into Arctic Ocean. It was vastly beneficial to supply of materielle for major oil production regions of Western Siberia.

Peter Lloyd

re: Willis 239/241

Willis – thanks for your very considerate attempts to sort out my problem….but it’s deeper than that – I’m just plain dumb.

No time to post now but will put my question later this evening.

Nasif Nahle

From where did the idea that water vapor “helps” the CO2 to absorb heat come? It sounds like a living being helping another species to achieve its goal, like comensalism or symbiosis. Does steam is a charitable soul or something?

ALLAN AMES

re 246 Nasif Nahle
Just groping for an answer, my quantum chemistry program (MOPAC) tells me the the reaction CO2 + H2O is favored by enthalpy, though unfavored by entropy except at oceanic pressures, so there may be some transient intermediates (that might even have their own IR contributions toward band formation or participation in the water bands). They would not live long but they might speed progress toward equilibrium. Then again, this may be irrelevant or even wrong.

richardT

#249
There was rain forest in the Arctic during the Eocene, and tundra in northern France at the last glacial maximum. Does this really counts as “reasonably stable”?

Nasif Nahle

# 249

John,

I visited Answer.com, but it has some basic “errors” that I cannot attribute to an oversimplification of the concept. For example, the definition No. 1 says, “…that allow incoming sunlight to pass through but absorb heat radiated back from the earth’s surface.” This is not a correct systematic description of the greenhouse effect, but a biased description.

Then it says, “The ability of a planetary atmosphere to inhibit heat loss from the planet’s surface, thereby enhancing the surface warming that is produced by the absorption of solar radiation.” It’s not a inhibition, but a delay. And here we go again with the paradox of the violation of the second… It’s another biased argument.

After that, Answers.com says, “Also, the atmosphere must be opaque at thermal wavelengths to prevent thermal radiation emitted by the ground from escaping directly to space. The principle is similar to a thermal blanket, which also limits heat loss by conduction and convection.” There is not any “thermal blanket” effect in the atmosphere and heat transfer by conduction and convection is not limited by any plastic or glass layer in the atmosphere that impeded the conduction and convection. Besides, heat is lost by the transmissivity of the thermodynamic system, not by conduction and convection. It is an inexact and tendencious information.

In one of the links from Answers.com (http://www.realtruth.org/articles/443-gwrfa.html?gclid=CLjXz5rJ0owCFQi9VAodMRJttQ) it is affirmed that “Hurricanes are becoming more numerous and more intense, and sea levels are rising.”, and they pointed it like a fact. Simply, it’s not true.

John Baltutis

Re: #206

The SysAdmin’s released my post from the spam filter. See #210 in Exponential Growth in Physical Systems #2.

Nasif Nahle

# 249

It may be an article from the IPCC. I don’t trust IPCC “assessments” because these are not based on empirical data, but on assumptions (for example, the reports begin with an “it is likely that…”).

Steve McIntyre

#250. Richard, in the sense that the earth hasn’t become either a Venus hothouse or a Mars icehouse, yes, it is “reasonably stable”. My understanding of GCM capability (per Huybers) is that GCMs tend to be able to get into an ice age or out of an ice age, but not both.

Bob Weber

Sherwood and Craig Idso have written a through critique of James Hansen’s 26 April 2007 testimony made to a House of Representitives committee on “Dangererous Human-Made Interference with Climate”. Link is
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.jsp

Bob

Steve Milesworthy

#255
While interesting, this posting referred to a paper that used a very simple model to deliberately search for plausible mechanisms for maintaining a stable temperature.

#258
Slightly related, the big models are too slow for full paleo reconstructions (they run at a few model-years per day so a glacial cycle will take decades to run).

Steve Milesworthy

#263 Peter Lloyd
There is an important band at 15 microns. See here for a plot of IR absorption of CO2 and water vapour in a clear tropical sky:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Iris/

If you accept this plot, it is clear that CO2 does have a role to play, since in this type of sky it is saturated where water vapour is not.

What is important is changes in absorption of outgoing IR rather than incoming solar IR. This is dependent on the earth’s temperature which is not to different between night and day. Most of the earth’s emissions are centred around 10-30 microns, and hence the important 15 micron CO2 band.

Hans Erren

re 263:

…shows conclusively that ALL atmospheric IR absorbers must be fully saturated.
My question is – where have I gone wrong?

The CO2 spectrum is not saturated!

Hans Erren

The CO2 spectrum is not saturated!
proof:
If the CO2 spectrum were saturated we could not see the surface using infrared sensors.

Gerald Machnee

Re #263 – Does not longwave radiation take place day and night? The difference is that during the day shortwave radiation causes a net gain in heating at the surface and there is a net loss at night as there is no shortwave incoming radiation.

Nasif Nahle

# 264 to # 271

Well, in my humble opinion, perhaps this could help. It is a fragment of one of my articles published by BioCab (I have not written down the link to my article by deference to this forum):

Total absorbed by the surface: 356.15 W/m^2 (you can check it out from NASA’s site)
Emitted by the surface to space: 181.64 W/m^2
Stored by the surface: 174.51 W/m^2
Absorbed by air from the surface: 19.55 W/m^2
Absorbed by water vapor from the surface: 130.89 W/m^2
Transferred by conduction to land and oceans: 24.07 W/m^2

In the dry air (Please, note that dry air does not exist in nature. It is considered here to consider a feedback with steam):

Total absorbed by the dry air: 25.07 W/m^2
Absorbed by dry air from the surface: 19.55 W/m^2
Absorbed by dry air from clouds and water vapor: 5.52 W/m^2

Stored by the dry air (by gaseous phase): 5.85 W/m^2
Emitted directly to space: 2.2 W/m^2
Transferred to water vapor: 14.66 W/m^2
Transferred to colder systems on the surface (averaged absorptivity = 0.1206): 2.36 W/m^2

In water vapor:

Total absorbed by water vapor: 243.35 W/m^2
Absorbed from the Sun: 97.8 Watts/m^2
Absorbed from the surface: 130.89 W/m^2
Absorbed from atmosphere: 14.66 W/m^2

Emitted to space from water vapor: 182.513 W/m^2
Stored by water vapor (by gaseous phase): 14.53 W/m^2
Transferred to colder systems on the surface: 44.503 W/m^2
Transferred to air: 1.804 W/m^2

Peter Lloyd

re: 264/5

But that is my point – the interaction between CO2 and outgoing IR radiation is NOT important, relatively, since:

1. It only occurs at night.
2. At wavelengths of 15-30 microns the re-radiated energy level is very low – it is barely what we understand as heat. An emitter has to be at a higher energy level than an absorber for energy transfer to occur.
3. Since the amount of CO2 is only 0.04%, the amount of re-radiated 15 micron energy absorbed by CO2 at night is insignificant compared with the daytime total saturation of ALL atmospheric IR absorbers, plus ALL the IR energy at all wavelengths stored by solid surfaces and oceans.
4. There is no evidence, as far as I know, that the broad 15 micron CO2 IR absorbance band is saturated with outgoing radiation at night.
5. What nocturnal greenhouse effect occurs is almost entirely due to water vapour which absorbs IR very well at 5 to 7 microns and partially over a very broad range from 13 microns down.
For these reasons, I cannot see how it can be said that changes in absorption of outgoing IR by CO2 are what is important, rather than TOTAL absorbed incoming solar IR. Absorption of energy from incoming daytime solar IR is orders of magnitude more important!

By the way, I am not in a position just now to challenge the graph shown in 265, but it doesn’t look like any CO2 IR transmittance/absorbance plot I have seen. The old Perkin Elmer IR spectrometer manuals showed a CO2 curve practically flat from 5 micrometers down to about 12.5, the beginning of the shoulder of the 15 micrometer 100% absorbance broad band. The text under the graph says that it comes from “model data” – that disturbs me!!

The CO2 greenhouse gas effect just does not exist. It is a modellers’ construct.

Mark T.

Hans Erren is exactly right; the CO2 spectrum is not saturated and this line of skeptic argument is a complete red herring.

I don’t think the more scientific “skeptic” arguments about CO2 are that it is totally saturated. However, it can never be completely saturated, at least not in any realistic situation. I agree that saying “it is completely saturated” is a bad tactic.

Hans said:

If the CO2 spectrum were saturated we could not see the surface using infrared sensors.

Yes and no. Given that it cannot be completely saturated, you’ll always be able to extract the returns with sufficient processing. The mere indication that you can detect certain wavelengths, as is evident in your plot, does not provide any information about the actual loss due to the atmosphere unless you know how much processing goes into generating the graph.

As an example, I’m working a radar problem now in which my “returns” are often 40 dB below the noise floor in a 1 MHz bandwidth (sometimes lower). Translated, that means if I have a 1 MHz bandwidth in my receiver, which equates to a noise floor of about -114 dBm (dB relative to one milliwatt), I simply need to process the data long enough to raise the returns above the noise floor to a point at which I’m reasonably certain I’m getting a hit, and not spurious noise. For the ground, which is fairly non-fluctuating, 13 dB SNR provides a 90% probability of detection with a 1e-6 probability of a false alarm (i.e., spurious), which would require 53 dB of gain for a -154 dBm signal. Essentially that means I have to integrate for about 0.2 seconds (~3 dB gain per bandwidth halving) to detect a signal with 99.9999% certainty it is not noise.

Mark

Peter Lloyd

Hans Erren/266:

You show an absorbance curve showing that CO2 absorbs 100% of IR radiation at 15 microns.

This neither proves nor disproves whether this waveband is fully saturated by the 0.038% CO2 in the atmosphere. In one way, it re-inforces my view, since it clearly shows that however much CO2 there is, (obviously, above a limiting minimum), once a waveband is saturated the gas can’t absorb more energy.

More important in this context are the two 100% IR absorbance narrow peaks at around 2.7 and 4.3 microns – the much shorter wavelengths mean much more energy is absorbed than at 15 microns.

I maintain that the huge amount of IR energy available at Earth’s surface, after the solar IR has passed through the entire atmosphere, shows that all atmospheric IR absorbers must be fully saturated.

re: 268-

Your IR photo of the Earth was certainly taken through one of the many IR windows in Earth’s atmosphere, within which no atmospheric IR absorbers exist and the atmosphere is transparent at those wavelengths. That does not show that other wavelengths are not fully saturated and totally opaque.

Peter Lloyd

Steve: re 269 –

Can you cite some evidence for the claim that CO2 IR absorbance bands are not saturated? Arguable, maybe, but hardly a red herring!

Steve Sadlov

Comment about forum behavior – the server keeps losing my username and email address info, even though my session has not ended. I keep having Kind-Captcha repeatedly invoked. Something appears to be wrong in terms of whatever database keeps temporary session info for each user connection. Maybe cookies are not happening, or maybe the database is simply flakey.

Nasif Nahle

# 279

Steve Sadlov,

But it seems that the oversimplification of the notions was made to baffle more than to shed light on the technical jargon.

Steve Milesworthy

#281
Nasif – sorry, didn’t notice that the units got chopped off. The axis on the left is absorption, and goes from 0-100%.

Mark T.

The higher level that humans can tolerate, if there is less than 15% of Oxygen, is 5000 ppmv.

I think you missed my point.

Mark

Nasif Nahle

# 283

Mark T. wrote:

I’m saying that there will always be some leakage of IR no matter how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. As you increase the CO2, you will approach the maximum level of absorption asymptotically. The level at which CO2 absorption is “completely saturated”

Yes, it would be like a holed barrel. But as well as you cannot put more water to a barrel over its capacity of containment, in the same way you cannot put more heat to carbon dioxide over its limit of saturation/absorption. This is the reason of those thermal constants of all kind of matter. For example the transmitivity, which maximum value for CO2 under the current conditions is 0.84 (today June 11, 2007, at 17 UT).

jae

269: Please put this in your post.

Steve Milesworthy

#287 Nasif,

The CO2 absorbs the radiation. The energy is redistributed among the O2 and N2 by collisions between the molecules. Then the atmosphere (not just the CO2) emits radiation according to its temperature (approx black body).

Nasif Nahle

# 295

MarkW,

Yeah, with water also.

bernie

On another thread Dan pointed to Denver as having the coldest June on record. Seems Denver is not a poster child for AGW but that has not stopped AGW advocates.

Irony of ironies in Denver: No recent warm years and yet plan aimed at curbing AGW is about to be rolled out.

All 3 stories appear on Drudge

Mark T.

The point was that even at very high concentrations, CO2 will not be a “brick wall” that stops all IR from passing into space. Certainly there is a practical limit at which _most_ IR will be trapped.

The “toxicity” comment was simply a mention to give relative numbers for when the CO2 itself will kill humans, yet IR will still be getting through to space. Above 5% in the atmosphere will cause hypercapnia, above 7%-10% unconsciousness pretty quickly, at least according to the wiki.

Mark

Nasif Nahle

# 300

Mark T.,

The point was that even at very high concentrations, CO2 will not be a “brick wall” that stops all IR from passing into space. Certainly there is a practical limit at which _most_ IR will be trapped.

Yes, that’s the point I missed with which I agree, but I was distracted by the “toxicity”. My apologies.

Mark T.

On another thread Dan pointed to Denver as having the coldest June on record. Seems Denver is not a poster child for AGW but that has not stopped AGW advocates.

Until this weekend, it has been reasonably cool in the Springs as well. It has finally warmed to early summer temps, however, and not a moment too soon. The camping trip this past weekend would have been rough had it stayed cold (we were at about 9500 feet, just above Woodland Park). Pike’s Peak still has a fair amount of snow on it (probably 50% snow coverage from an eyeball inspection), which hasn’t been the case for the previous four summers.

Irony of ironies in Denver: No recent warm years and yet plan aimed at curbing AGW is about to be rolled out.

Denver will in turn force its policies on the rest of the state in an attempt to “save” us all. Great.

Mark

John Lang

Sea Surface Temperatures for last week have come in and it looks to me like an official La Nina event will have to be called now.

Lower troposphere temperatures have fallen by 0.35C since this La Nina started in mid-January. To put 0.35C into perspective, that is half of the warming which has occured since 1900.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #306 – I don’t want to alarm anyone (and never want to be called an alarmist). That having been written, I do find some things alarming. What you just wrote is highly alarming. I am concerned about a perfect storm, of sorts, whereby negative ENSO, negative PDO, and solar cycles constructively interfere. There could be even more to it than that. Any unbiased accounting of climate history, to the extent we can know it or even make educated guesses about it, will reveal that rapid changes appear to have been many. We are in a, relatively speaking, warm mode at present. Here are all these folks out there concerned about rapid change in the warm direction. That is highly illogical. We are in a warm mode now. Any further change in the warm direction could end up being overshoot …. just before the transition to a cold state. Hopefully, the worst case scenario is another LIA. I don’t want to think about anything worse than that.

Joe Ellebracht

re 308
11 year solar cycles, ENSO, PDO. Longer range weather, not climate, or no?

Peter Lloyd

Steve Milesworthy – re 275:

1/2 – What you say is of course absolutely correct. My contention is that the re-radiated IR is not absorbed by atmospheric CO2 in daytime because the relevant CO2 IR absorption bands are already saturated by incoming solar IR. Nor is it significantly absorbed at night because the 15 micron CO2 IR absorption band is at too long a wavelength and at too low an energy level to be significant in comparison with the huge energy transfers made in daytime.

3 – No, low CO2 is not a red herring; it’s important because the rate of temperature rise (= rate of heat transfer) is controlled by the amount of CO2 present in a mixed gas system. Not the final temperature, which cannot be more than the temperature equivalent of the highest of the CO2 IR absorption bands (2.7 microns). Very low CO2 concentration = very slow rate of heat transfer.
Of course you are also absolutely correct that thermal emission from the whole atmosphere is much more important – but that is my very point; a greenhouse gas CO2 effect plays no significant part.

4 – I guess I use “saturation” in this context as meaning that all the IR absorption bands of CO2 in a given system have been raised to the energy level of the incident IR at the relevant frequencies and can absorb no more IR energy.

5 – Undisputable. But my point is that a CO2 greenhouse effect plays no significant part in this process.

David Archibald

Re 269, Mr McIntyre, the CO2 band isn’t saturated, but it is very nearly so. Let’s do the maths. The first 20 ppm is worth 15.3 watts per square metre. From 20 to 40 ppm is worth a further 3.1 watts. Before we go any further, let’s up the ante. Warmers talk in terms of a doubling of preindustrial CO2 as something dreadful. That would be 560 ppm. Let’s talk in terms of 1,000 ppm. Watts to 280 ppm is 26.7. Going to 1,000 ppm is a further 5.3 watts for a total CO2 effect to that level of 32 watts. What is the preindustrial wattage as a percentage of 1,000 ppm? It is 83.5%. So while it is strictly true that the CO2 band is not saturated, it is saturated as far as having any effect on life on this planet, in timeframes of less than hundreds of years. To convert watts to atmospheric temperature effect, I recommend the Idso figure of 0.1 degrees C per watt. For example, from 500 ppm CO2 to 600 ppm is worth 0.8 watts, which translates to a warming of 0.08 degress C. AGW is real, it is also minuscule. Throw in the plant growth effect and increased atmospheric CO2 is wholly beneficial. I recommend the MODTRANS site for anyone wanting to examine the logarithmic effect of CO2 saturation for themselves.

robert burns

re 313

I agree the IPCC estimate will not be accurate.

The modern world needs energy and fossil fuel is a major source. From a CO2 basis, it makes little difference if the fossil fuel is oil, tar sand, oil shale or coal. They key to which is used is really a combination of economics and technology. What that combination of fuel (carbon based and nuclear) and technology will be in 2050 is any ones guess

Steve McIntyre

#314. I disagree with this analysis for a number of reasons. I encourage posters not to over-reach or jump to conclusions or assume that trivial errors have been made.

The issue of CO2 saturation has been discussed at length in other forums and I don’t have the time to discuss it here. I just want to record that it is well understood that the main CO2 band is saturated in the center of the band and that that has nothing to do with the validity of AGW arguments.

SidViscous

David

Can you give a link the MODTRANS site.

Hans Erren

re 292:
Heinz Hug only considered the 14-16 micron wavelengths, where CO2 is fully saturated over the atmospheric path.

MarkW

toxicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicity

Anything that has a negative affect on a body can be said to be toxic.

So excessive CO2 is toxic, so is excessive water.

MarkW

High levels of CO2 in the air make it more difficult for the lungs to expel the CO2 from the blood.

The lungs perform two functions, take up O2, and expel CO2. The efficiency at which both processes take place is affected by the relative concentrations of both gasses in both the blood and in the air.

Steve McIntyre

enough physiology discussion. do it elsewhere. Thx

Andrey Levin

Ha!

Ross McKitrick proposes Solomon’s solution to GW debate:

“Suppose each country implements something called the T3 tax, whose U.S. dollar rate is set equal to 20 times the three-year moving average of the RSS and UAH estimates of the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly, assessed per tonne of carbon dioxide, updated annually. Based on current data, the tax would be US$4.70 per ton, which is about the median mainstream carbon-dioxide-damage estimate from a major survey published in 2005 by economist Richard Tol. The tax would be implemented on all domestic carbon-dioxide emissions, all the revenues would be recycled into domestic income tax cuts to maintain fiscal neutrality, and there would be no cap on total emissions.

The IPCC predicts a warming rate in the tropical troposphere of about double that at the surface, implying about 0.2C to 1.2C per decade in the tropical troposphere under greenhouse-forcing scenarios. That implies the tax will climb by $4 to $24 per tonne per decade, a much more aggressive schedule of emission fee increases than most current proposals. At the upper end of warming forecasts, the tax could reach $200 per tonne of CO2 by 2100, forcing major carbon-emission reductions and a global shift to non-carbon energy sources.

Global-warming activists would like this. But so would skeptics, because they believe the models are exaggerating the warming forecasts. After all, the averaged UAH/ RSS tropical troposphere series went up only about 0.08C over the past decade, and has been going down since 2002. Some solar scientists even expect pronounced cooling to begin in a decade. If they are right, the T3 tax will fall below zero within two decades, turning into a subsidy for carbon emissions.”

CA Mirror

Time to short oil futures?

MarkW

#330,

What about credits for the benefits of warmer temperature and CO2 fertilization?

Steve Milesworthy

#330
Couple of large volcanoes and budget deficits go through the roof! On the other hand, a strong El Nino drives the poor tax payer into poverty.

MarkW

Seems that aviation companies have discovered something that GCM modelers are still denying.

————————————-

Rockwell Collins Conducting Global Weather Radar Tests ‘€” Rockwell Collins is conducting the third in a series of global flight tests of its airline market MultiScan radar that detects storms automatically, so geographical differences in storm behavior can be modeled in software.
The major commitment by the Cedar Rapids, Iowa company, is putting the latest MultiScan radar in a BBJ temporarily equipped as a test bed over Iceland, Europe, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, as well as the North and South Atlantic. The 20-day trip runs June 2-22.
The MultiScan automatic airborne weather radar was first released in 2002, and the company has learned from airlines since then that it needs to be adjusted to work optimally in different parts of the world. As it turns out, all thunderstorms are not created equal, and convective weather behaves very differently over the oceans near the equator than it does over Iowa or over the chilly waters of the North Atlantic. New algorithms developed on these flight tests will perfect the geographic smarts the automatic radar needs to provide the best performance regardless of the region it is in.
The automatic radar was born when airlines started having problems keeping up with the constant need for weather radar training. They wanted the avionics company to create a more standardized tool. Now, the automatic radar is being perfected with data from global flight tests that will be compared to satellite weather data to create a model of storm behavior.
For example, on the North Atlantic one flight uncovered a situation in which red and yellow storm cells were painted when the view out the cockpit showed clearly that the stratiform cloud deck was below the aircraft’s cruise altitude. This is the type of false alarm these tests are designed to find and eliminate for the latest upgrade to the MultiScan radar software.
— Aviation Daily

Steve Sadlov

RE: #337 – What’s amazing is that the Jet Stream is actually split right now. This is more something I’d expect during winter, off the West Coast but not over the Northern Rockies. One branch as you’ve noted is going into TX (then out over the Gulf!) before looping back up, essentially right along the Gulf Stream. The upper branch goes up into Northern Ontario then out over Hudson Bay, before doing something really amazing, taking such a hard right turn that it actually reenters the US near Niagara Falls traveling just west of south! As a result, there is a persistent trough along the Eastern Seaboard. Meanwhile, after the two branches rejoin over the East Coast, it then goes south of the Azores, and splits again with branches going into the Iberian peninsula and North Africa (!). Both of those branches are way farther south than would ever be expected 9 days before the Solstice. Maybe this is what’s going to be typical now that we are apparently back into negative PDO. Last time we had a negative PDO I was a kid. The depths of that one were before I was born.

Craig Loehle

“The Team” gift ideas!

I have found the perfect gift– “Consensus” brand clothing! check it out at the mall

Steve Sadlov

RE: #341 – No, I was referring to the protracted drought during the 1950s which impacted many of the same areas the long drought of the 1920s affected.

T J Olson

I have the opportunity to question NCAR’s Greg Holland next Tuesday evening, June 19th, in Boulder, Colorado.

Since he’s speaking on the political implications of his new forthcoming paper, linked to and discussed on CA here, which argues – along with IPCCs 4AR – that the Atlantic Hurricane data correlates with natural and ACW influences, I’m re-reading both.

But if anyone wants to bullet-point something I ought relate or ask, I’ll be happy to consider it. Off-hand, I’m most impressed with Tim Ball’s comments. Thanks.

Hans Erren

re 345 and 335:
Check this multivariate analysis:

Douglass, D.H. and B.D Clader, 2002, Climate sensitivity of the earth to solar irradiance,
Geophys. Res Lett. vol 29, no. 16, 10.1029/2002GL015345

jae

346: Hans, ?? aren’t they essentially correlating temperature with temperature (SST) here?

Steve Sadlov

RE: #345 – Hey, don’t lie about what I wrote. I did not claim that the records fail to reflect ENSO and volcanoes. And that is the point. Where is the AGW signal? Show it to me and tell me its magnitude.

Steve Milesworthy

Steve Sadlov, my ironic reply was in response to your comment:

RE: #334 – You seem to be admiting that volcanoes and ENSO are stronger forces than reputed “killer AGW.”

which makes some incorrect assumptions about the AGW case. The following link is as good as any in pointing out that only a radical degree of smoothing would iron out the effects of ENSO and volcanoes from the temperature record sufficiently to allow it to be used as a basis for important policy.

Anyway, this topic now has its own thread.

Steve Milesworthy

#353
If you can’t see the warming trend in the graph I posted, I suspect that your monitor has got a wobbly stand.

Read the T3 thread for the context of the stratosphere comment. I obviously can’t do anything right in your eyes. I feel now that if I spelt a word wrong you’d use it as evidunce that the “AGW orthodoxy is broken because warmers can’t spell”.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #354 – So, you think that Tropical Troposphere does have a warming signal unrelated to ENSO and volcanoes, and reflective of AGW after all? Well if that’s the case, you should have no qualms about T3 being tied to it then. Especially if some sort of rolling average, for example a 5 year rolling average, were used, to set the tax rate.

Nasif Nahle

# 346

Hans Erren,

I tell you again, the line of the Solar Irradiance Intensity is very short and it corresponds to the number of sunspots, not to the net SI-I. The SI-I increases with sunspots because these are generally associated with flares. However, the flares that the Sun erupts during the low part of a sunspots cycle send more energy to Earth because there are not many bubbles of electromagnetism that could deviate the particles (or nucleons) sent in the Solar Wind. Please, could you provide provide a graph that details the SI- I? I’d like to use it in my next debate (June 17). Thanks.

Hans Erren

re 358:
Sorry I can’t help you, SI-I is new to me. Perhaps you could amend Douglass and Clader yourself?

Steve Milesworthy

#357
5 years of almost stable temperatures (albeit about 0.3C warmer than the preceding 3 years) Oh goody – AGW is a lie!

Or which is better? A 5-year term of (lack of) oscillation, or 25 years of data.

Nasif Nahle

# 362 # 363

AGW is a lie. Data from nature and mathematics told me that… 🙂

Colleague Steven McIntyre, I cannot do more than to stammer without thermodynamics!

Steve Milesworthy

Sorry Mark T. for showing frustration, but the trend is irrelevant and I shouldn’t have let it distract me.

The point is that the large short-term impacts of ENSO, volcanoes and the like mean that the trend cannot accurately be determined, so I guess I agree with you, but I’m not the one arguing for it to be used to set a tax rate.

Steve Sadlov

What could be so wrong with using the 5 year running average of T(tt) for setting the T3 tax rate? The longest El Nino or La Nina I am aware of has been 2-1/2 years. Heck, make it the 11 year running average for all I care. The longer the better.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #369 – PG&E is a financial disaster. They recently emerged from bankruptcy and you can see why. They failed to invest in new capacity when it was afordable and got stuck in the downward spiral of relying solely on conservation to create headroom in the grid. The only thing that actually saved their arses was the brief spurt of small indy producers (typically small gas turbines) during the late 90s and early 00s brown out period. In fairness, all the do gooders investing in green power has led to lots of money sinks and tax loopholes known as windfarms – these also help marginally during the summer months. If people who live in still-normal places want to see into the future, assuming that the AGW hysteria continues to hold sway, look at the PG&E service area – this is your future.

ALLAN AMES

re CO2, Steve McIntyre and my 73, 185, and 224 blogs

I am ready to talk about radiation transfer, the conditions for applicability of the Schwarzschild eqn. and its impact on modeling, but I will wait for the blog. In the meantime, please ponder on the difference between absorption lines and bands.

Bob Koss

Unthreaded getting a new page for the weekend?

Nasif Nahle

# 374

Bob Koss

Is this the reason to the laziness of my typos?

Filippo Turturici

A very curious thing.
On the famous site “Cryosphere Today” we can see full sea ice data.
They show in a precise graph that now Arctic sea ice area anomaly from average has gone slightly below -1million km^2 (let’s say -1,1/-1.2millions), from previous about -1million, very much.
Then I liked to control it: we can do it very easy, since in the same site we can control all the regional anomalies in Arctic sea ice (there are a couple of areas out of data, Ohotsk Sea and St. Lawrence Gulf, but they are usually ice-free in June).
So I made a simple addition: and the result was about -700/-750,000 km^2, very much but also very less the datum above.

John G. Bell

Re # 379
That interview is worth the newsstand price alone. No spin no filter. Discover lets Svensmark tell us his what he thinks. Nice job. They respect their audience.

SidViscous

CLimate Change responsible for the conflict in Darfur now.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070616212708.ymevxrx6&show_article=1&catnum=0

Nasif Nahle

# 381

Mark T.

Please, tell me what do you mean by “blow me away”. Thank you.

Steve Sadlov

Weather not climate ….. more than 50% of the land area of the Lower 48 has a forecast of rain today. And of course the media are showing sad images of flooding in the Southern Plains. These storms are of Siberian or Arctic origins. It’s as if the pattern which caused the hard late winter weather is either back in place of never left. If I were east of the Rockies I’d be seriously concerned about my 4th of July plans. If nothing changes pattern wise over the next two weeks, this will be a legendary year in terms of rain outs and in some cases, border line chilly conditions, for the 4th.

Mark T.

We’ll be camping at 30-mile campground on the 4th, elevation 9300′, in SW CO. Last year it started raining on July 1 and, well, it hasn’t stopped since (certainly exaggerated for dramatic effect). Of course, they banned all fires that day as well, in supposed preparation for the partying on the 4th (that fireworks are already banned on National Forest grounds was apparently immaterial). We’re expecting a rainy week this year as well, though it has been wet enough leading up to the 4th that they should let us burn some wood this time, which will allow us to sit around the fire drinking and swapping 4-wheel and fishing stories from the day’s events.

Mark

Steve Sadlov

RE: #388 – The amount of rainfall/snowfall in the 4 corners region over the past year has been impressive. I suspect that at least in that region, “the Great Southwestern Drought” is essentially history at this point. The more recent “Great Southestern Drought” looks to be headed that way. Meanwhile, here on the Central Pacific Coast, we may be heading into a drought ourselves. Typical La Nina / Negative PDO. On the other hand, up in Washington and Northern Oregon, they are living up to their stereotype …. LOL ….

John A

Kristen Byrnes on James Hansen

Astronomer, physicist, mathematician, and “father of global warming.” James Hansen seems to have a busy life for someone from Iowa. But the real question seems to be is whether or not Hansen is too busy to realize what he is actually saying to the public.
As Hansen attempts to seduce, exaggerate, and alarm the public, some people (like me) attempt to inform the public of the reality of global warming, its impacts, and now, the truth behind James Hansen.

There’s more at the above link.

Jonathan Schafer

#386

Weather not climate ….. more than 50% of the land area of the Lower 48 has a forecast of rain today. And of course the media are showing sad images of flooding in the Southern Plains. These storms are of Siberian or Arctic origins. It’s as if the pattern which caused the hard late winter weather is either back in place of never left. If I were east of the Rockies I’d be seriously concerned about my 4th of July plans. If nothing changes pattern wise over the next two weeks, this will be a legendary year in terms of rain outs and in some cases, border line chilly conditions, for the 4th.

Steve, I can attest to the severse flooding in N TX last night. I picked up my wife from the airport at 11:45 PM. Got home around 12:15 AM. Saw a fair amount of lightning so checked the radar. Lo and behlod, there was a pretty nasty looking storm just S of D/FW airport. Went to bed and woke up 1/2 hour later as the lightning was so bad, the thunder kept setting off the car alarm. Checked the weather sites and found out we were in a tornado warning (radar indicated). So the wife and dog went into the closet under the stairs while I kept tabs on the radar and the conditions outside. Winds were pretty bad and it was probably the worst lightning storm I’ve ever been in. Fortunately, no tornado occurred. But, in that 1 hour the storm was over us, it dropped between 4 and 8 inches of rain. Some areas received up to a foot of rain causing extensive flooding and unfortunately, two deaths. I-35 was closed near Gainesville (about 40 minutes N of us). In Haltom City, a trailer park suffered extreme damage when trailers where lifted off their foundations. At one point, the storm regisered 64dBz. And all this after receiving several inches of rain earlier in the day, along with rain 28 of the past 49 days. Since May 1, D/FW has recorded nearly 12 inches of rain, but that’s nothing compared to some areas around me. We’ve received probably closer to 24 inches at my house and some areas are pushing 30+.

The cut-off low is finally being picked up by the trough over the middle of the country and rain chances are ending. But, with all the mosture in the ground, there’s a 20% pop chance of pulse t-storms in the afternoon each day for the rest of this week. Normally, by this time of year, the persistent H that sits over us during the summer would surpess this type of convection. But it hasn’t set up at all this year, due to the jet stream position and we’ve instead been sitting in NW flow aloft which aids in the development of these storms. From NWS,

Toward end of 7-day forecast period…ridge retrogrades west…
and will put North Texas in northwest flow. CPC 6-10day and 8-14day
outlooks place North Texas in above normal precipitation zone

This just doesn’t happen here in the summer. Latest forecast temps show a high on July 1 of 88 degrees. Also very rare to not be in the 90’s to hear 100 in July. Accuweather called for above average precip and below avg temps for us for the summer. So far, they are been spot on.

At least the reservoirs and lakes are filled again, easing some of the watering restrictions.

Barry B.

RE: 387

Thanks for the link jae.

As anyone involved in crop production knows, soil moisture is one of the key components to bountiful harvests. Now we find out that it’s a big factor in regulating temperature, yet the alarmist’s AGW/crop productivity research never includes soil moisture in their equations. I wonder why?

Jeff Norman

I can’t find a link, but according to the broadcaster on Toronto radio this morning Environment Canada has issued its latest seasonal forecast. The summer is supposed to be warmer than usual but now it is also going to be wetter than usual. This is a change from the last one where it was going to be hotter and drier than usual.
They also pointed out (in the context of warm temperatures) that:

THERE HAVE BEEN SEVEN RECORD DAYS IN 2007

This, I thought was something I could check out.

Yes indeed there have been seven record high temperature days so far in 2007. But what does that look like? How many record whatever days should there be in a year?

All things being equal, in a 69 year record I’d expect there to be 5.3 records per year. So it would seem that seven in the first six months could be unusual.

But of course its weather. In 1969 there were nine record hot days. Seven of them occurred in May. Even with all these record days May 1969 in total was below average.

What about those 2007 records?

13.9°C Dec. 31, 1965
9.2°C Jan. 1, 2007
13.9°C Jan. 2, 1950

12.0°C Jan. 4, 1993
11.1°C Jan. 5, 2007
13.9°C Jan. 6, 1946

20.9°C Mar. 25, 2000
20.3°C Mar. 26, 2007
22.6°C Mar. 27, 1998

29.4°C May. 7, 1939
27.5°C May. 8, 2007
30.1°C May. 9, 1979

31.7°C May. 23, 1964
31.0°C May. 24, 2007
28.1°C May. 25, 2007
30.6°C May. 26, 1944

33.3°C Jun. 11, 1949
32.4°C Jun. 12, 2007
33.9°C Jun. 13, 1956

Sure, all seven of those days in 2007 set new record highs for temperatures on those days, but all but the May 24 record looks pitiful in comparison to the days surrounding them.

It annoys me that Environment Canada breathlessly presents these records without the context. One would almost suspect that they have some sort of agenda.

BTW: 1949 remains on top with 18 record high days.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #393 – A theory. AGW is a term, and likely a non dominent term, in the overall global temperature equation. I agree with Pielke Sr. and set forth that it is, at most, 30% of the overall thermal control driver. Furthermore, it is highly likely that there is a non monotonic response function of the world climate system to both PP(CO2) and tropospheric temperature. Certain negative feedbacks may behave like non monotonic parasitic terms, similar to the reaction force of air against an aircraft, in that they increase logarithmically with increasing energy in the system. The system starts to reach a point of diminishing return and the realized temperature can only reach a certain level, then goes asymptotic. Meanwhile, the energy components which would have gone into raising the kinectics of the atmosphere’s molecules (and hence, temperature) are consumed instead by the parasitic terms. So, yes, increasing PP(CO2) is likely increasing the overall energy in the system but that energy increase has increased the temperature about all it’s going to do, and other energy dissipative processes are consuming any additional upward increments in total energy resulting from retardation of IR emissions due to GHGs.

Jeff Norman

Re:#401 Steve Sadlov,

It is only easy to break a record if the thing you are measuring exceeds the previously recorded value. IIRC John Brignell has something to say about this.

For a while I have been pondering if you could quantify the representativeness of a weather station’s record by looking at the daily record highs and/or lows.

I find it interesting that three consecutive days have historical record highs and/or lows that are so very different. For example, look at this sequence.

13.9°C Dec. 31, 1965
9.2°C Jan. 1, 2007
13.9°C Jan. 2, 1950

We know that some day the 9.2°C on Jan. 1 will be replaced by something closer to the
13.9°C on either side of it. The only thing that has to change is the length of time you keep recording the data.

Can one say that the 9.2°C is representative of what the highest temperature could be on Jan. 1? Or is 13.9° more representative? If we agree that 13.9°C is more representative then we could say that we obviously have not measured the temperatures on Jan. 1 long enough to record a temperature that is representative of what the highest temperature could be.

If that’s the case then can we say that the length of time that we have recorded temperature in this location is long enough to create a record that is representative of what the weather could be?

Steve Sadlov

RE: #402 – Hehehe …. this is just like quality control. Where does one set one’s warning and control limits so as to, on the one hand, protect the customer, while on the other hand, not crying wolf repeatedly …..

David Smith

Financial Post story on future solar activity

Nasif Nahle

# 407

Bob Koss,

That was a cool idea! Hahaha…

Steve Milesworthy

#405 Nasif
So you’ll be glad to know that six of the authors of the papers referenced in the #387 link are IPCC contributors, including one who was a drafting author of the WG1 Summary for Policy makers.

Richard Sharpe

I received my copy of The Chilling Stars in just two days after ordering it from Amazon.

Filippo Turturici

Steve S., could you tell me how is it going this early American summer?
I see reports of persistent heat waves on the Rocky Mountains northward to Alaska, but also unusual summer frost and snow in Quebec (with snow fallen just 100km from Montreal a couple of weeks ago, maybe it was since June 1816 when it actually snowed in Montreal that it did not happen – but, since my city too recorded a June snowfall [1793 or 1798] I feel it strange that Montreal never saw June snow since 1816).

Europe is splitted in two too: cold fronts moving through UK to Spain, with unusual frosts in Scotland and autumn-like temperatures in Iberia, calling African hot air on the Mediterranean and the Balkans; Scandinavia and Russia had an early and very hot summer start, but now are under average and changeable weather.
Between Monday and Tuesday, a cold north-western front should move toward Central Europe, bringing unusual conditions (for summer) southward to Italy (at least in the North of my country) with snow over 2000-2500m in the Alps, and probably chill temperatures at night (overall in Germany), while frosts will be possible in Ireland and Scotland – in the mean time, it seems that no unusual heat wave will move northward, while European Arctic temperatures seem to stay normal or even something below mean values.

tetris

Re: 414 and 415
The temperatures in the coastal and near coastal regions of British Columbia [NW Canada] have been well below normals since late last year [anywhere from 3-8 C], as evidenced by slow growth in the garden. Until early April precipitation was up significantly and the coast mountains [including Whistler] have seen record snow packs.

Mark T.

The Rockies had a late spring, I don’t know who told you otherwise – there was unprecedented late snow in a number of locations.

It was still snowing in Summit County just a couple weeks ago. Perhaps Filippo was referring to the Canadian Rockies?

Mark

woodentop

#417 – is the ‘proof of global warming’ heatwave/drought now over in Australia?

David Smith

The long-anticipated La Nina may be stirring to life. A La Nina needs favorable subsurface water conditions plus strong easterly surface winds to help upwell the cool water. So far, the winds have not been supportive.

But, things appear to be changing. The current wind-and-surface temperature map is here . It shows mixed temperatures (on average, neutral) but the arrows, which show wind anomaly, now show anomalously easterly winds, which support upwelling of cool water.

Supporting evidence is provided by the SOI (a measure of atmospheric pressure patterns and thus wind patterns), which is shown on the yellow plot midway down this page , which shows an upward move into La Nina territory.

Persistence is the key, and we’ll simply have to wait to see if the winds persist. The computer models say they will.

Subsurface temperatures are not as favorable as in past months, but the near-equator Pacific continues to run anomalously cool in its upper regions.

Global temperatures have been cooling despite the absence of a La Nina. If this La Nina indeed forms, and combines with the apparent negative PDO pattern, 2007 will indeed be a year of cooling (except for those involving barbeque pits, sewage plants, jet exhaust, asphalt and trees).

Bernie

I saw my first bristlecone pine in situ today at Bryce Canyon, So Utah – alas the oldest one looked dead. The younger ones looked healthy and did not seem to mind the temperature – close to 90F. If this location is typical, then I do not see how they are going to unravel the rings as proxies for temperature vs precipitation. Interesting somebody noted that the douglas pines are clustered close together to maximize the length of time snow melt is available for trees in this location. If this behavior suggests anything it is the primacy of precipitation in this particular location.

Filippo Turturici

#415 and #418: the fact was that, from Europe, we see from weather maps temperatures of 25-35°C at about 1500m/5000ft in all the states from Utah to California to Colorado to New Mexico etc. in these days, and it is very hot for us (African worst heat waves have 20-25°C at the same level), but maybe it is normal in the SW deserts: indeed, Salt Lake City at 35°C with 5% R.H. seems to me not so strange.
But, for e.g. Alaska and Yukon, it seems a pretty warm summer until now – as pretty cold in East Canada, and not so hot nor dry in East USA.

Here too, a famous TV meteorologist (the same man who stated that everyone who doubts AGW cannot be a scientist, and who now advertise air conditioning for a shops chain…) forecasted a very hot and very dry summer in May (a new summer 2003) but by the end of May to a couple of days ago it rained everyday here and it was not so hot (now it is hot, but it should not last tomorrow, and from Tuesday on it will not seem mid summer) – and I feel it amusing, not be sad, that when finally some hot day arrived (a month after their forecast of late May for early June…) he and his staff tell that they had for reason.

Misidentify

crosspatch wrote in #425:

The UK Met office has issued their first ever public Atlantic tropical storm forecast and it is significantly below the US forecasts. They are calling for 10 named storms for the remainder of 2007 which would be a total of 12 including the two already named.

It would be interesting to know how this forecast differs when the AGW assumptions are removed.

Joe B

ON GLOBAL WARMING HERESY
Special to the Cornwall Alliance, March 16, 2007
By Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I am frequently asked to describe my experiences as a contrarian about global warming. I still find the request somewhat annoying, and in this piece I would like to explain why. For starters, to be a contrarian generally implies an automatic tendency to go against popular wisdom. That is not my position.

What in the world does it really mean to be a contrarian’ on the issue of global warming? On an issue where virtually all popular depictions depend on long chains of uncertain connections, support for all these linkages would constitute more a religious faith than a scientific position. On the other hand, where the elements of the picture do deal with relatively basic issues, there is, in fact, little disagreement. Some examples may help clarify the situation.

For instance, there is little argument that levels of C02 in the atmosphere have risen from 315 ppmv when we began systematic measurement in 1958 to about 380 ppmv today. There is also relatively little argument that preindustrial levels were about 280 ppmv. There is no disagreement that C02 is a gas with important absorption bands in the infrared.

There is agreement that at the level of fractions of a degree, the earth’s global mean temperature is always varying, and there is widespread agreement (though with appreciably greater uncertainty) that over the past century there has been net warming of between 0.5 and 0.75C (depending on which analysis one uses). This warming has, as far as anyone can tell, been irregular, with warming between 1920 and 1940, modest cooling between about 1940 and the mid 70’s, warming between about 1976 and the early nineties, and little of either since.

Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that greenhouse forcing is currently about three quarters of what one would expect from a doubling of C02, and yet we have seen much less warming at the surface than the models project – even with models that have oceans which are supposed to delay the response.

Here the argument amounts to one between those like me, who think that the most likely reason for the discrepancy is that models are exaggerating the response, and those who think the models are correct, but that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming. However, even the IPCC acknowledges that our confidence in the aerosol cooling is low.

Agreement goes even further: there is general agreement that the famous blanket’ picture of the greenhouse effect that Gore likes to present is, in fact, misleadingly wrong. Rather, the real greenhouse climate effect requires most warming to occur in the middle of the tropical troposphere (cooling at the surface is mainly by motion systems, with the heat deposited in the middle of the troposphere where it is then radiated to space), and as a recent report of the National Research Council notes, warming trends at this level in the tropics appears to actually be even smaller than at the surface.

For me personally, I find that the low climate sensitivity is consistent with my research on cloud feedbacks and other matters, but when it comes to current research one doesn’t normally seek general agreement.

So where is there significant disagreement?

The main focus of disagreement has remained much the same since I first went public with my objections to catastrophic claims in 1988. (It is sobering to realize how long we have been told by environmental groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists that the end of the world as we know it is imminent due to global warming.) At that time, I felt confident, on the basis of my own research over the previous decade or more, that our knowledge didn’t warrant these claims.

Given the long term nature of climate, it should not be surprising that there is little reason to change this position. Nevertheless, it has, since the 80’s, led to an important disagreement with some of my colleagues over whether our present limited knowledge warrants deep concern or not. I, personally, don’t think so, but I respect my colleagues’ right to feel otherwise.

This difference is distinct from the issue of whether concern is tantamount to feeling that specific actions are warranted. Most of my colleagues would agree, for example, that Kyoto is merely symbolic with little potential for affecting climate. Some favor other approaches, but I think there is widespread acknowledgment that with presently known or anticipated technology there is little that one can do to significantly cut greenhouse gas levels, and even less that one can do to significantly reduce radiative forcing by greenhouse gases (which, in the case of C02, goes up much more slowly than the level of C02 itself).

There are, of course, some who feel that warming concerns are a good excuse for implementing their pet energy policies. Here, I share with the late Roger Revelle (whom Gore points to as his mentor in this area) the view that current evidence does not warrant any drastic actions that cannot be justified independently of climate concerns.

Given my views, I am happy to be at an institution like MIT. At least most people at MIT are sufficiently technically savvy to appreciate the arguments involved with this issue.

In the world at large, the situation is certainly different. No scientific issue has likely ever been as politicized as this one.

Global warming has for about 20 years been a major focus of environmental advocacy groups and their political allies. In the last two years, they have greatly expanded their efforts to spread alarm to the public at large, including elementary school children, who lack any ability to understand the issue and are apparently suffering an appreciable degree of anxiety.

In any marketing effort, it is useful to offer the objects of the propaganda something that they value. In the present instance, they are offered at least two such benefits. First, they are given a sense of virtue: simply by changing light bulbs or (for the wealthier) buying a Prius or even by paying some outfit an indulgence to cancel their carbon footprint, they are made to feel that they are saving the world. Second, their intellectual insecurity when confronting such a complex issue is relieved by being told that all scientists agree with whatever propaganda they are fed. Under the circumstances, they are made to feel that in going along with the propaganda, they are displaying intelligence, and acquiring the right to consider anyone who does not as being either stupid or hopelessly corrupt.

Thus, the existence of questions about the validity of the global warming alarmism threatens both their virtue and their intelligence, and it should not be surprising that the response to such threats can be emotionally intense.

However, judging from my email, a great many people are beginning to resent being exploited in this manner. I fully expect that this latter group will eventually be vindicated, and that alarm over global warming will go the way of Y2K and the Club of Rome forecasts for hunger (not to mention the fears over global cooling of just 30 years ago).

Steve Sadlov

RE: #423 – No, it would be #1.

Mike Rankin

I found a link on numberwatch to an interesting assessment of the IPCC climate forecasts:

here