Climate Audit

Bob Weber

How is it possible to read analog thermometers to an accuracy of 0.1 degrees for the temperature graphs?

Bob

Ian Blanchard

First, I should introduce myself, as this is the first time I’ve posted, after reading the site
for a while. I hold a PhD in analytical geochemistry, and prior to that undertook a Masters in
Geochemistry (with a significant environmental component) and a degree in Geology. I’ve always
been somewhat skeptical of the ‘Anthropogenic’ in AGW, as it seems to disregard the scale of the
Earth and the complexity of atmosphere-ocean-biosphere interactions.

Announced yesterday (and prominent in BBC news reports last night) that this winter has been the
2nd warmest on record according to the Central England Temperature record (which has been running
continously for nearly 400 years), and that the last 12 months (March 06-Feb 07) has been the
warmest 12 month period ever (but then, 06 was the warmest year ever according to the UK Met
office, and this winter has been notably warmer and wetter than last, so obviously this becomes
the warmest 12 months).

What I found most interesting though was the graph about half way down, showing the average
temperature, which just bumbled along on a gently rising trend (with noise of about +/- 0.5 deg C)
prior to the mid 80s, after which it has been climbing rapidly to nearly 1.5 deg C above the
long term values. Evidence of global warming? Evidence of an urban heat influence extending to
the site? Evidence of fiddling data or evidence of some changes to Atlantic Ocean conditions?
(personally I suspect it is mainly a reflection of Atlantic circulation, as this winter we have
had pretty much nothing but wet Atlantic south-westerlies)

David Smith

A longer-term plot of Central England temperatures is here .

welikerocks

The ‘Hockeystick’ – Global Warming Scandal of the Decade
By Michael R. Fox Ph.D., 2/27/2007 2:50:36 PM

The basics of science involve a number of simple rules, a healthy skepticism, and a guiding principle of letting the data settle the disputes. Data need to be checked and validated, measurements need to be explained and justified, as well as the calculational techniques described. Replication of the results by others is essential, as are the analyses of measuring errors and uncertainties…

…Incredibly, there were two individuals, Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre (M&M), two Canadians who had the wits, statistical and computer skills, and doggedness to unravel the complex data and the obscure statistical techniques used to construct the “Hockeystick’. (http://tinyurl.com/27vu3v). Their efforts were obstructed at many steps along the way by the studies’ authors. This opposition by the authors also is an intellectual red-flag indicating that something besides good science was involved, such as politics, funding, or fame, etc. Good scientists welcome replication and solid reviews.

The Hawaiian Reporter-Freedom to Report Real News

apologies if this has been linked already

Paolo M.

#4 If one want to look at the Atlantic Ocean conditions, look at the temperature plot of the best scientific observatory we have on its shores: Valentia.

The increase in the last two decades and the lack of cold in the last few years are clear, but the single higher values are older and current average is not so far from that of the ’40s.
The recent dramatic climbing in central England temperature is all but an effect of rising sst in the ocean!

Sean Houlihane

Doc: the data is here http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat I seem to have lost my old copies of this data so I can’t do a diff.

I noticed whilst browsing the ‘ordered’ version that the 1700s have approx. 2.4 of the warmest 10 months for each month, and the 2nd warmest june on record was in 1676.

Paolo M.

re #11: Hans, let’s move to the other scientific observatory in that wonderdfull island. At Harmagh they calibrated the data for all known inhomogeneity and the increase is not as dramatic as in CET or in Uccle. The increase in minimum temperature is quite significant but, as dr. Pielke Sr. states, Tmin are not to be considered in trend estimate.
Hans, would you help me, please, answering to an old question of mine: what is the Earth mean surface temperature? I mean a scientifically writed value.
I did this question somewhere in the past but I didn’t get a satisfactory answer. Thank you.

Paolo M.

re #15: doesn’t it matter if an anomaly value is greater or smaller than the uncertanty of a certain observable?

jae

Does anyone know where an updated graph of average SSTs is located? That is probably a much better metric for heat content and temperature change, according to Pielke. I wonder if that data is being “adjusted,” also.

Ken Robinson

Steve:

Some months ago you mentioned that you were working on producing one or more succinct papers which would in essence demolish the corpus of work surrounding the Hockey Team’s climate reconstructions. (I’m paraphrasing; please excuse me if I’ve misstated something, but that’s the impression I got.) One could say that CA has done exactly that in the course of many hundreds of posts, but distilling it all into a few solid papers, published in the formal literature, remains a very worthy goal IMHO.

For all I know, this work has been proceeding in the background but in the past few months, there’s been little content on this subject and a great deal now on the surface temperature record, discussions of hurricanes, the IPCC process, etc. While doubtless these areas also merit significant investigation, it seems a loss to me that CA appears to have moved on (if you’ll pardon the expression) from its original raison d’etre, especially without reaching what I would have thought was the logical climax of your efforts. Of course you’re going to do whatever interests you, but I for one hope that you still intend to publish your refutation of the Team’s work. In addition to marking, perhaps, the final phase of that particular debate, more formal publications on your part would serve to further enhance the credibility of your comments on other topics.

Very respectfully,

Ken Robinson

MarkR

Whatever happened to Juckes et al?

tom

Why is it when creating these temperature reconstructions, such as the Central
England data above, the use mean from 1961 to 1990? Why not use the mean of the
entire series? This is done with many of the series. Why use just a sampling
of time rather than the entire time period of the dataset itself?

welikerocks

on fox news science page today:

new study “Tree Growth Depends on Water, Not Heat, Research Shows” In a first study of its kind, scientists looked at the survival mechanisms of cone-bearing trees such as pines and firs in the harshly dry pre-monsoon seasons of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. Previous models of typical western or temperate forests consider temperature to be the main driver of respiration and photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into food.

“My research indicated that for the semi-arid forest that is not the case. It is driven by when water is available, in that the roots do not freeze and thus as soon as the soil moisture is available, whether winter or summer, they will turn on their photosynthetic processes,” said lead study author Constance Brown, a researcher at Indiana University.

The results of the study will be detailed in the April issue of the Journal of Arid Environments.

MarkR

#22 Jae. Re your link. I don’t think Juckes et al or the others should just be allowed to leave a failed paper to be forgotten.

Given the importance of the subject matter, there should be some record, some note, some memorial to its failure, otherwise the Hockey Team will just pretend it never happened, or they’ve “moved on”.

jae

Mt. Shasta’s glaciers are growing, presumeably because of increased precipitation. What do you bet that this increase in precipitation (snowpack) has a lot to do with the bristlecone pine growth spurt.

David Smith

Re #31 I see this book review/talk on the Singer/Avery book. I haven’t completely read it and have no opinion, but it looks like interesting reading.

Julian Flood

Re 14: ‘what is the Earth mean surface temperature? I mean a scientifically writed value.’

What would you like it to be? (Sorry, sorry, I’ve been looking at too many recently-adjusted graphs).

I like the Valencia graph — I can see a clear WWII Kriegesmarine signal. However, nothing on Uccle or Armargh. Are there any other graphs which give good clean coverage of the Atlantic from about 1935 to 1950? I think about the Canaries, Iceland, maybe the Azores.

JF

fFreddy

Bit of good news from the UK …

THURSDAY 08 MARCH
Documentary
The Great Global Warming Swindle
9:00pm – 10:35pm
Channel 4

Provocative documentary that sets out to challenge the widely accepted view that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for global warming. With arguments from leading scientists, the film points to recent research that solar radiation may be a more plausible factor in climate change, and suggests that reducing carbon emissions may not only have little impact on the environment, but may also have unintentional repercussions for third world development.

Hans Erren

only BBC 1 and 2 in Holland 😦

Steve Sadlov

RE: #39 – I surmise that “Coast to Coast AM” must be something listened to by at least one Canadian government official … LOL … calling Art Bell, calling George Noory ….

Sidviscous

” but I’d be willing to pony up $50 to see Al Gore debate Lindzen, Singer, or”

You’d have to do more than pay $50.

Gore refuses to get in a debate with them. He cancelled an appearance in Europe because they were going to bring in Bjorn Lomborg too. Even after they pulled Lomborg Gore still refused to come on. I’m pretty sure Gore knows he won’t be able to debate on any points, he’s about soundbytes not debate.

jae

Be worried, be very worried. All the water in the mid latitudes may boil away this June. Using IPCC’s temperature sensitivity factors, I have calculated that the June average temperature in the mid-latitudes (I used figures for Denver) will be between 90.5 F- 212 F this summer (the average for past summers is 66.9 F).

Using solar energy design information for Denver, I found that the energy received during December is 3-4 KWH/M^2/day and it is 5-6 KWH/M^2/day for June. (This is insolation on an almost zero albedo (black) panel, I presume, but it also does not count the amount absorbed by the atmosphere. So I conservatively assumed that the decrease in reflection is balanced by the amount absorbed in the atmosphere). Using the midpoints of these two ranges, gives a difference of 2,000 KWH/M^2/day between December and June. This is equivalent to an average of 2,000/24 hr = 83.3 Watts/M-2 difference between December and June.

IPCC’s range of 1.5 ‘€” 4.5 deg C for the 3.8 Watts produced by doubling CO2 gives between 0.39 ‘€” 1.2 deg. C/Watt. Applying these factors to the 83.3 Watt difference between summer and winter in Denver gives a 32.5 ‘€” 100 degree C range of possible temperature changes. Average Dec. temperature in Denver = 0 deg. C. Therefore, if we have “average temperatures,” the June temperatures will be between 32.5 and 100 degrees C. That’s 90.5 ‘€” 212 deg F AVERAGE TEMPERATURE! If IPCC’s upper range of sensitivity is accurate, all the water in the mid lattitudes will boil away in June!

Now, before you dismiss me as a crackpot, please read on.

The actual temperature increase associated with the average 83.3 Watt increase in energy from December to June in Denver should be related to the average June temperature in Denver’€”66.9 F or 19 deg. C. This gives a sensitivity of 19deg C / 83.3 Watts = 0.22 deg/Watt. It is quite intriguing that this sensitivity factor agrees remarkably well with Nir Shaviv’s calculations! Just coincidence? Maybe.

Someone will immediately think that I’m making a big mistake by assuming that there is a linear relationship between temperature rise and heat increase, pointing out that there are some important reasons for non-linearity, such as the relationship between water vapor pressure and temperature (which could increase positive water vapor feedback with increasing temperatures). However, I will counter that Shaviv has shown that sensitivity does NOT vary with temperature over the seven degree range of -2 C to + 5 C. But then someone will argue that it might not be linear over a wider range of, say, 0 C to 20 C.

But consider the following scenarios:

Case 1: Assume a cold Dec. and a very hot June in Denver: a diff. between Dec. and June of the maximum 3,000-6,000 KWH/day = 3,000KWH/day, or 124 w. At 0.22 deg/Watt, that = 27 deg. C = 80.6 deg F CHANGE between Dec. and June. (that might correspond to, say, an avg. Dec. temp of -5 and avg. June temp. of 22 deg. C, or 71.6 F)

Case 2: Assume a “normal” December and a very hot June–a diff. between Dec. and June of 3500-6000 KWH/day = 3,000KWH/day, or 104 w. At 0.22 deg/Watt, that = 22.88 deg. C = 73 deg F change between Dec. and June. (that might correspond to, say, a normal avg. Dec. temp of 0 C and avg. June temp. of 22.8 deg. C, or 73 F)

Case 3: Assume a warm December and an exceptionally cold June’€” a diff. between Dec. and June of 4000-5000 KWH/day = 1,000KWH/day, or 42 w. At 0.22 deg/Watt, that = 9 deg. C = 48 deg F change between Dec. and June. (that might correspond to, say, an avg. Dec. temp of 3 C and avg. June temp. of 12 deg. C, or 54 deg. F)

All the above cases seem to be reasonable possibilities.

Now, if the relationship between temperature rise and heat were not somewhat linear, then sensitivities would increase with increasing temperature, and Case 1 would give an unrealistically high average June temperature. And Case 3 would be snowball Denver. In other words, if sensitivities increased with increasing temperature, then one should have a run-away temperature rise in Denver during an exceptionally hot summer. There are obviously some important negative feedbacks, such as clouds and t-storms that tend to make the relationship fairly linear.

I think IPCC’s sensitivity factors are clearly bogus.

John Lang

There is a really good IR image of England from this summer July 15, 2006 in the middle of England’s heat wave (European Space Agency’s Envisat and Nasa’s Aura satellite).

The picture shows the urban heat island effect very clearly. Every major city shows up hotter than the rest of England. There was a better blow-up of this image available at one time but I can’t find it now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5211592.stm

David Smith

Speaking of Arcctic ice, I recommend taking two minutes to view Dr. Rigor’s movie on Arctic ice movement, located mid-page here . It covers the last 25 years of Arctic ice movement, showing how ice circulates and some is expelled into the Atlantic, to melt.

White is think ice, light blue is thin ice. The animation doesn’t show it well, but there was a big loss of thick ice in the 1990s, lost into the Atlantic, due to wind patterns.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #47 – Do you trust the anomaly slope, as depicted by the NSIDC (a favorite org of S. Bloom)?

David Smith

Re #50 There are differences between the NSIDC estimates and those from other places, like Cryosphere Today. None are audited (to my knowledge) so I would not take either as gospel. There are subjective elements in ice estimations and anything with subjective elements is vulnerable to bias.

On a different subject, something you and welikerocks discussed once (I think) was heat from the floor of the Arctic Ocean. I noticed Figure 4 in the “Arctic Sea Ice Forecasts” writeup at Rigor’s home page . I wonder where that relative warmth at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, detected by buoys, comes from.

Hans Erren

re 14:
What we can learn from Armagh versus Central Europe is that climate sensitivity in a humid environment is significantly lower than in a dry environment. Furthermore a cold region has a higher sensitivity than an an warm region (classic stefan boltzmann). Therefore the regions with the highest climate sensitivity are cold dry areas with a low albedo (central siberia and central arctic canada), which were the regions that warmed up most during the last 40 years. What we also observe is that the tropics warm faster when the tropical rainforests (humid) are cut.

Paolo M.

re #54: I agree: water is what prevent Earth to get too warm!

Hans Erren

re 55:
The south pole ss is an altiplano covered in ice, not the ideal place to study boreal climate sensitivity, in confuguration it is similar to the summit of greenland.
Also the antarctic peninsula is a geometric oddball in the antarctic. Even a slight change in the circumpolar current has a dramatic impact on the peninsula which protrudes perpendicular in the current.
The best place to study climate sensitivity is central siberia and central canada, remote from the temperating ocean.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #58 – And interstingly, although the media have made much hay of “the threat to ice roads” (of course, with weasle verbiage such as “ice roads MAY cease to be used by mid century” etc), in truth, in the high latitude continential locations, thus far, climate change magnitude has been pretty boring.

Steve Sadlov

Here’s one for Steve Bloom:

http://sierramagazine.com/sierra/200703/innovators.asp

If anyone had the slightest doubt about the degree to which Ecological Correctness has infiltrated corporate halls of power in the US ….

It’s to be expected. The Radical Generation are now firmly in control, now that the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation have mostly retired / passed away.

jae

Forgot link.

Hans Erren

re 59:
it isn’t zero at the noth pole

re 65:
I never looked at original CET Data, I only have a photocopy of Manley 1953 in which a list of the original data is given.
Manley G. 1953. The mean temperature of Central England, 1698’€”1952. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 79:242’€”257
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/113521276/ABSTRACT

jae

67: A great article. Wish everyone would read it.

Hans Erren

So between 1706 and 1722 Central England was located in The Netherlands…

jae

Now that the HS Team has been thoroughly discredited by MM and others, and the tree ring stuff has been “resolved,” my interest has moved to the so-called sensitivity factor. Isaac Held was here for a while, but he seems to have disappeared from this blog (Collins thread). Funny how the pro-AGW folks disappear from a thread when threatened with the facts. I am hoping that someone will come here and tell us just how the hell the IPCC and the models get such high sensitivity factors. I’m waiting for someone to beat me up re: #44. This is, after all, the crux of the issue of AGW. Maybe they think they have won the battle through media events and arm waving. I don’t think so…

Tom Brogle

Cosmic Rays.These two factors are treated separately by climate scientists and show no correlation to Global Temperature. However since they both affect temperature they should be treated together
When cosmic rays reduce, more energy from the sun can impinge
on the earth but at the same time the energy from the Sun is reduced
because part of its surface is covered by cooler areas (sunspots).
I have demonstrated that this has controlled global temperature over the last 52 years.This theory explains the global temperature better
than that currently accepted one.
AND I CAN PROVE IT!
At the moment I am like the small boy in the Hans Anderson Story
who shouted “but the Emperor has no Clothes”
I will have to shout louder

Paolo M.

Re #70: MarkR, I’m not saying that surface temperature or Atlantic sst have not been increasing. They do!
Now, just compare the Central England plot in #5 with the Harmagh series (link in #14). CET is climbing up to 1.4 °C anomaly, Harmagh, where measurements are scientifically taken, is not.
If you want to infer the sst increase in the Atlantic, you have to look at Harmagh and the dramatic increase in Englad has another reason. I mean you can explain just a small part of the increase by the sst.

MarkR

#77 PaoloM I was only commenting that I personally notice an increase in humidity in the UK, especially noticeable in hot weather. I agree with your other points.

Steve McIntyre

#78. Ann Coulter’s claim:

“There are more reputable scientists defending astrology than defending “global warming,”

is both false and ludicrous. The Goracle is bad, but she is worse.

Luboš Motl

Ross McKitrick is featured here:

http://tinyurl.com/2oznmf

johnmccall

re: link in 82 – I also recall Dr Jones making that “2007 warmest” forecast in JAN’07.

I believe there is an analogy somewhere in the expression, “who votes is less important than who counts the votes”

Luboš Motl

Just to mention, correct me if I am wrong: the global temperature lags behind El Nino and La Nina dynamics by 4 months or so, so up to June, it could still be warm globally, and the year doesn’t have to be spectacularly cold.

The last La Nina was after El Nino in 1998, namely from 1998-2001. See what it did with the global temperatures.

Steve #81: I am not insulted by Ann Coulter’s comments either. Of course that if taken seriously, it’s not quite realistic. But even in that case, it depends how you exactly measure and define reputation.

David Smith

Re #87 Lubos, you are right: there’s a lag. The length of the lag varies, as do the parts of the planet which get “hit” hardest by the anomalous warmth.

The El Nino SST peaked out about October/November, 2006 and the maximum global impact looks to have been in January, 2007. The initial temperature anomaly report for February is considerably less than January’s anomaly. The impact was dinky.

The satellite-derived global temperature (RSS, lower troposphere) is here . I’m increasingly inclined to think that global temperature peaked about 2003 (ignoring the 1998 El Nino) and began a slow decline. That decline was slightly interrupted by the 2006 El Nino but that warming impact is gone. If La Nina comes, combined with slight cooling of the Warm Pool, then the decline should resume and be quite noticeable on the charts. That’s my guess.

Luboš Motl

Thanks, David #89, it was very helpful. I can only claim some complementarity to your text and some overlaps. 😉

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/el-nino-ended-la-nina-may-arrive.html

I am often observing Milloy’s graphs – but where do you get your preliminary February data now?

Ken Fritsch

Dear David #84, why haven’t I ever been told about PDO?

Isn’t that part of Bill Gray’s explanation of global climate/temperature changes? David Smith has told us all about the PDO, but I am sure he will entertain offering a refresher course and/or private tutoring.

Ken Fritsch

It is I who needs the refresher course here, as I was thinking NAO when I answered on PDO. I know Steve Sadlov has posted much information on the PDO and I am sure David Smith has also, but I recall more of his NAO.

Gary

And now for something a little different. I think Unthreaded is the appropriate place for it and Steve won’t mind a little satire.

In the 1960s when the environmentalist crowd grew to political awareness, the musical (and later film of the same name), Camelot, was so hugely popular that it became a synonym for the Kennedy presidency (“… ask what you can do for your country.”). It is a story of King Arthur and his utipian kingdom. Recently I rediscovered the lyrics of the song that Arthur sings to Guenevere on first meeting her. Read them first and then see what you think of an AWG version (offered with deepest apologies to Lerner and Loewe). It helps if you have the melody in your head.

It’s true! It’s true! Al Gore has made it clear.
The world is warming more and more each year.

We started burning too much fossil fuel here.
July and August now are much too hot.
For soon there will be no more snow here
In Warmalot.

The winters now arrive way past December;
It says so on the data plot.
Torrid summers linger through September
In Warmalot.

Warmalot! Warmalot!
Although it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Warmalot, Warmalot
That’s how conditions are.

Predictions say we’re in for lots of trouble.
However, federal grants will soon appear.
The CO2 has got
To a convenient spot
For happ’ly modeling climate here
In Warmalot.

Warmalot! Warmalot!
We humans sadly are the cause,
But in Warmalot, Warmalot
We’ll make up lots of laws.
At last consensus says the issue’s settled
So science facts will never interfere.

Deniers then cannot
Find inconvenient spot
For happ’ly trading carbon credits here
In Warmalot.

Paul Linsay

Re: The PDO. The step function changes that are apparent in the PDO and in the satellite global temperature struck me as very important and led me to a very simple model of the climate. Sunlight penetrates the oceans to some depth heating the water. Eventually the increased buoyancy of the deeper warmer water causes it to become unstable and it rises to the surface rather suddenly, like a bubble but on longer time scales, where it heats the atmosphere and produces the step function in the atmosphere’s temperature. It seems like a logical explanation since there is no way of storing significant amounts of energy in the atmosphere, it just has no heat capacity. CO2 can’t contribute to this at all since it only heats the atmosphere a bit and consequently is not able to heat the oceans to any depth. My two cents.

David Smith

Good starting places for PDO info are here and here .

This graph shows the 20’th Century variation in the PDO, which relates rather well to the graphs of global temperature patterns. The PDO also has dramatic local effects, such as the Alaska temperature shift in 1976 .

The problem with the PDO is, frankly, that we just don’t know what it is, or how to properly characterize it. Even more humbling is that there are reasons to think that the PDO is just one aspect of something bigger and more important, which we do not grasp. (Note that the concept of PDO is new, having been originated in 1996.)

The situation is like that of trying to understand an elephant when all we currently see and grasp is just the elephant’s tail.

There are interesting, obscure papers like this one which try to understand part of its causes and connections.

One day people like Wu and Liu, working quietly and without press releases, will succeed, and we’ll likely learn that much of the current warming has actually been part of a natural oscillation. But we’re not there yet, and it will probably be a low-profile subject until the Wus and Lius of the world piece together this elephant.

Luboš Motl

Dear David #101,

is it just like observing pieces of elephant and there is something bigger behind it? Then I know what it is. It is M-theory :-), see the last page (top) of my popular article

Click to access lm2.pdf

I can’t quite follow the Wu Liu paper but they don’t seem to be too unknown,

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=wu+liu+pacific+decadal

Best
Lubos

David Smith

RE #101 The first link was bad, sorry. It should have been this .

For some reason, IE7 won’t let me check links before posting. I find that if I check the link in the preview, it erases the entire post. IE6, on the other hand, was never a problem. Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong, please post.

Ian S

#64 jae,

There is a much more current article on warming on mars here — http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

Fred Harwood

“In the Earth’s atmosphere, 39Ar is made by cosmic ray activity, primarily with 40Ar. In the subsurface environment, it is also produced through neutron capture by 39K or alpha emission by calcium. 37Ar is created from the decay of 40Ca as a result of subsurface nuclear explosions. It has a half-life of 35 days.”

Argon apparently has a much greater presence in air than CO2. It also has a larger GW effect, which is why it is used in Low-E windows. As the above quote suggests, it also varies with cosmic ray activity. Anyone know of argon’s effect on the earth’s surface temperature?

Mark T.

Not being able to form molecules doesn’t preclude absorbing IR. That’s just an energy issue.

Mark

Jos Verhulst

Interesting post on the Inuit who, because of global warming, are confronted with the phenomenon of sunburn.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002656.html

John Lang

The point of the article is that so much of this global warming hysteria is based on myth and mythmaking and people who are so willing to accept any kind of garbage that comes along with respect to global warming.

Sunburns have always been a distinct feature of the arctic especially around June 21 when the snow hasn’t fully melted yet and there is 24 hours of sunshine with the sun at its highest level.

Like the story about people in the arctic having no name for “robins”. Here is a link to a study that directly names them in Inuit and notes the people looked forward to seeing them in the Mackenzie Delta each May.

http://www.taiga.net/wmac/aklavikreport/robin.html

Ian S

#115 Ah ok, so the article was pointing out the ridiculousness of this connection.

Hans Erren

re 116:

It’s Channel four, not BBC4, (I would be very surprised if the BBC would broacast this 😀 )

ET SidViscous

“It’s Channel four, not BBC4, ”

Appologies. I thought there was BBC and Skye and that’s it. I assumed when they said Channel 4 they meant BBC 4, as BBC 3 would be Channel 3.

Peter Lloyd

re:110/111

Surely atoms are far too small to resonate at thermal IR wavelengths? Something the size of a molecule is needed to resonate and absorb IR energy, and subsequently to be able to emit it. The ideal size, as I remember, is exactly half the wavelength for the most efficient energy transfer with the IR band of 1 to 15 nm.

Or was I asleep at the back during Physics class?

Peter Lloyd

re 116

The trailers being shown for the Channel 4 Global Warming programme are very aggressive – ‘sham’ , ‘a pack of lies’.

Looks like it’s going to be fun!

george h.

re#116,125

Anyone know if Durkin’s documentary will be available for viewing in the U.S. or on the net?

Dave Dardinger

re: #126 & others

In order for something to absorb or emit in the IR, there must be quantum states in the emitting or absorbing entity the difference in energy of which lies in the IR range. Now you can always excite an atom such that an electron is in a high enough quantum state that such IR transisitions exist. But this requires low pressures and high temperatures (or else there won’t be sufficient number of atoms in such a state to matter). This is why you could seem them in stellar atmospheric spectra, but they could only exist on earth in the ionosphere. Maybe they do, but if so I’d highly expect that the population is way too small to have much effect on global warming.

re: #138,

Different isotopes of an element won’t have differences in which molecules they might or might not form. There will be very small differences in the spectra of the different isotopes whether as atoms or molecules, but not whether or not the isotope can form molecules.

Michael Kozuch

Could this be the reason that parts of the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed up, and ice sheets have colapsed?

Scientists Discover Undersea Volcano Off Antarctica

Martin à…

Hi all, I would really enjoy a discussion on the topic below. But I don’t know where to post it.

In climate models, water vapor feedback plays a big role as a positive feedback. I have understood the reasoning as this:

A: Higher temperature causes higher water vapor content in atmosphere.

B: Higher water vapor content in atmosphere causes higher temperature.

A causes B which causes A, in an endless loop. If the behavior of this loop is convergent, i.e. none of the involved quantities tends towards infinity but to a limited value, at the point of convergence either A or B (or both) has to be untrue. Because, if both are true, the temperature will rise and water vapor content increase and we haven’t reached the point of convergence.

So, the only conclusion I can reach is that, in a stable climate:

C: Higher temperature does not cause higher water vapor content in atmosphere

or

D: Higher water vapor content in atmosphere does not cause higher temperature.

I don’t see how this fits into the climate models predicting water vapor feedback amplification unless their climate is unstable.

W Robichaud

Sorry to go off thread:Were could I find the Cost estimate for the Kyoto Protocol?
Thank you!

Steve Sadlov

RE: #99 – I liken it to a one-shot electrical circuit, in other words, a very crude clock, which issues a messy and jittery square-ranging-to-sawtooth wave.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #131 – More likely due to oscillations in ocean currents.

Luboš Motl

Dear Fred #134, it was a pleasure. Being an insulator is something slightly different from being able to optically absorb infrared radiation. But you are right that argon is also a very good heat insulator – partly because it doesn’t absorb radiation, partly because it is so dense. 4 of 5 divers would confirm I am right. 😉 Argon is kind of invisible to everyone: radiation, other gases. In the atmosphere, you can add it, it increases the pressure a bit, but if you just removed all argon atoms, it wouldn’t make much difference.

Mark T.

Dear Mark T #111, let me say the same thing as Peter Lloyd in different words. Electromagnetic radiation is absorbed in quanta known as photons.

I realize this. Tis what I do.

The energy of the photon is proportional to its frequency. This energy must be equal to the difference between energy eigenvalues, otherwise the transition is forbidden. Besides the ground state of argon, the next closest state you may find has an electron excited into a completely different shell – because all existing shells are already occupied by electrons for inert gases like argon. The energy difference from exciting an electron to such a state is high and corresponds to visible or ultraviolet radiation. There is no absorption of IR rays by argon at all.

I did not realize this. Tis not what I do. 😉

Actually, I also realized the first part of this, though I had not dug down into the specifics enough to put two and two together to come to the conclusion that Argon cannot absorb IR. I’ve taken my semiconductor devices class (which relies heavily on the physics involved here) and since flushed it from my working knowledge. Apologies.

Mark

Luboš Motl

Hi Mark T #143, my word “visible” was a huge exaggeration. It is only hard UV rays, see the absorption spectrum of Argon

http://www.jobinyvon.com/usadivisions/vuv/dragon.htm

Hundreds of eV is very far from visible light, on the UV side. I didn’t properly take the large Z into account. 😉

welikerocks

Two Thumbs Up to Dr. Tim Ball for being on Hannity and Colmes tonight.
His response to Colmes after being called a denier made my year.

Thank you Dr. Ball!

David Smith

RE #146 Lubos, help me understand this one (I admit to having only scanned Pielke’s article): today, in 2007, are we indeed close to an equilibrium temperature?

I thought the IPCC estimate is that the climate sensitivity is about 3C for a doubling of CO2, meaning that the to-date effect of CO2 should be about 1.5C to 2.0C. The estimate is that the globe has warmed 0.5C to 1.0C, meaning that we have another 1C or so to rise. So, it would seem that we’re not at equilibrium and should be accumulating heat somewhere.

Thanks

Howard Wiseman

FROM ZDNET Today: “An unknown cracker broke into a server hosting downloads of the popular WordPress blogging software and rigged the file with a remotely exploitable code execution vulnerability.

News of the hack comes directly from WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg:

“If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.”

Mullenweg described the code planted into the download as “unusual and highly exploitable” and stressed that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched during the attack.”

bernie

Dr. Ball has made a number of strong compelling statements. However, I am not sure I feel comfortable with
someone who somewhat inflates his standing or at least leaves it open to significant misinterpretation.
However, if he won his lawsuit with the Calgary Herald I will certainly retract the above. I have not found
anything since the filings at the end of last year.
Please note I am very skeptical of AGW, even more so more so after spending the evening trying to decipher
Mann’s non responses to Wegman’s crtique and noting the failure to address any of the criticism of
the statistics.

John A

Re #151: Fortunately we are on 2.1 and did not have time to upgrade to 2.11. Version 2.12 is being considered for upgrade. I’m glad that the developers of WordPress have put in steps to secure WordPress from future hacking.

Re #154: DeWitt – you can contact me (climateaudit AT gmail DOT com) or Steve (smcintyre25 AT yahoo DOT ca), or just leave a comment and one of us will retrieve it (which I’ve done already).

Paolo M.

#156: Hans, I am a little boring, I know, but I do not understand why, if we are able to measure a temperature anomaly, we are not able to do the same regarding a radiation anomaly at the TOA.
The measurement error with temperature has been circa 0.5 °C and the anomaly is provided with a precision of a hundredth of a degree. What prevent us to provide a radiation anomaly with a order of magnitude of one watt or even less?
Thank you.

Luboš Motl

Dear Hans Erren #156, your very exact sentence that the 30 W/m^2 error makes it impossible to measure the current imbalances is actually exactly my sentence from 2005

http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/04/earths-energy-balance.html

But we must distinguish the question whether the error is small enough that the concept can teach us anyting new & accurate enough & reliable enough – from the question whether we can define the quantity. I think that if we are careful, we can clearly define the quantity and try to manipulate with it.

Paul Linsay

#160, Hans,

It’s even more outrageous that we only have two measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels, one in mid-ocean the other in Antarctica. I’ve read comments that CO2 oscillates up to 500 ppmv daily in forests. There are also the questions raised by Jaworowski about the validity of the CO2 measurements in the ice cores. This is the other area besides the surface temperatures that needs a very thorough airing.

Bob K

Here’s a quote from a NOAA new item. Found here. It’s still a rather infant operation though, with only one site each in Australia and S. America.

NOAA scientists have been tracking CO2 levels around the world for more than 25 years. The oldest record comes from the Mauna Loa Observatory, which is located atop a Hawaiian volcano. There, Charles Keeling began CO2 measurements in 1958. Following NOAA’s formation in 1970, measurements continued at Mauna Loa and began at other places around the world. There are now more than 60 monitoring sites worldwide.

Luboš Motl

If you want to see the video of skeptic, Dr Timothy Ball on Hannity & Colmes, click the last word “video” in this text:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/great-global-warming-swindle.html

Best, Lubos

Luboš Motl

Dear Bill F #166, even according to the Hansen numbers, the current imbalance is supposed to be 0.8 W/m^2, about 5 times smaller than the announced forcing from the artificially added greenhouse gases according to IPCC.

So I find it reasonable to say that the path to stabilization from the current imbalance 0.8 W/m^2 would only take us 1/5 of the warming we have seen which would be about 0.2 Celsius – a trend for 10-20 years. At any rate, it seems obvious that this change will be unobservable and unattributable in the noise and it is not worth any discussion (or even political consequences) except for a very narrow group of specialists – theorists.

We can differ about numbers but I think it is obvious that we are much closer to equilibrium than what we would be if some parts of the system changed abruptly. We are never quite at the equilibrium but we are almost never very far from it.

Bill F

Lubos,

I agree with you regarding where we are in regards to “equilibrium” with regards to CO2 forcing, although I hate the use of the word equilibrium with regard to climate, because it implies stability. As my question to Dr. Pielke and Gavin over at Climate Science implies, I am skeptical about the magnitude of the accumulated CO2 forcing imbalance since 1750 reported by the IPCC, and accordingly, I believe that the remaining “distance to equilibrium” temperature-wise is smaller than what is currently estimated using IPCC figures.

I think what Dr. Pielke is really angling for with his critique of the IPCC figure/caption is the same thing he has been angling for for quite some time (and rightfully so), which is to change the IPCC focus from temperature anomaly to heat content anomaly. In that respect, I think he is fighting the same battle the economists and investors fight with the Fed in trying to get them to start looking at more forward looking indicators and fewer trailing indicators when tracking the economy. Temperature changes will always follow heat content changes, so looking at the heat content anomaly will provide a more “current” estimate of what future temperatures should be expected to do. What I see the IPCC and other AGW’ers doing is responding to questions about non-anthopogenic forcings by saying that the non-anthropogenic forcings can’t explain the warming of the last few decades. Then they turn around and estimate the change and forcing since 1750 assuming that most of it is anthropogenic in nature, when doing so clearly contradicts their admission that 1750-1950 warming can be accounted for almost entirely with non-anthropogenic forcings.

Bill F

Lubos,

I don’t think we “should” reach equilibrium. I think the only equilibrium the earth would ever reach would be as a dark cold icy ball billions of years from now. Until that time, I think the earth’s climate will continue to fluctuate back and forth around a sort of moving average. An interesting question that somebody posed a few months back on Roger Pielke Jr’s blog was “what is the ideal temperature?” To me, that question is the crux of the AGW policy argument. The assumption made by the AGW alarmists is that we have altered the climate from what is “natural” (which makes the assumption that humans are unnatural) and that that is a bad thing. The evidence used is that we have raised temperature by some measure since some arbitraty point in history through our actions. I would argue that for people in places where their activities and economy are severely limited by cold temperature, such warming is good. While for others whose economies are threatened by heat or sea level rise, such warming would be considered bad. The question I have is this:

If we truly do have our hands on the thermostat for the planet, and we believe it is our social and moral responsibility to deliberately undertake actions whose sole purpose is to reset that thermostat back to some level other than where it currently is, who decides what is the “right temperature” for the planet and who pays the costs of actions undertaken to “save the planet”? Anybody who has worked in an office where more than one person is dependent on the same thermostat for their comfort has encountered this dilemna. The elderly lady in the corner wearing the shawl wants the thermostat set to 80F. The fat guy in the office with the sun shining in the window wants it set to 65F. Everybody else in the office falls somewhere in between. So who decides what temperature is best? The Scandinavian nation that is benefitting from having ports clear of ice for a longer period of time each year? The British vineyard that foresees growing its own grapes for the first time in decades? The Australian farmer who believes AGW is causing the drought? Or the small island nation that is afraid it may one day be under water (which is terribly unlikely, but still used as a scare tactic)? And which among them gets to decide who pays the cost? Is it fair to ask the scandinavian country to pay to make their climate colder when they would prefer to be warmer? Is it fair to ask a nation who will see little notiveable effect in either direction to pay a large share of changing the climate for somebody else? I don’t know the answers, but I expect that the debate over how to answer the questions will be brutal indeed (even if future natural cooling renders the answer moot).

Luboš Motl

Dear Bill F #171, in theoretical physics, we usually think about the final equilibrium to be the empty de Sitter space at its own temperature whose thermal wavelength is the size of the Universe. That will be reached after all black holes (that eat everything around) evaporate. 🙂

So who decides what temperature is best?

That’s a good question but fortunately there is also an answer: Al Gore himself. According to his heated swimming pool, the best temperature is 82 Fahrenheit. 🙂 I completely agree with you, of course: whether or not climate and its effects, regardless of their origin, influence some global averages is unimportant for everyone. Everyone has his own situation and counting and rationally, people can’t even agree about the sign of a desirable temperature change. The only way how they could agree that cooling is correct is a catastrophe. That’s why the catastrophic AGW is unfortunately necessary for the AGW theory to have any social impact, which is why we hear it so much.

Jim #172: Well, I would also like to see a movie with the same formal qualities as Guggenheim, and I am also afraid this won’t be that if there will be too many people in it… Are you a good moviemaker? Maybe we should create our documentary. 😉

David Smith

The satellite-derived global temperature for February, 2007 is here . This is the lower troposphere, from UAH.

What it shows is that the El Nino’s impact likely peaked in January and has begun to fade. I think we’ll see anomalies below +0.2C in the second quarter (April-June), as the equatorial Pacific cooling kicks in.

Jim Edwards

#174 fFreddy,

Thanks for steering me straight.

#173 Lubos,

Sadly, I’m no director. My background is biology / vacuum deposition / law.

I’d like to see a populist dialogue, like Gallileo did w/ Simplicio to show the superiority of heliocentric theory – but coupled with animation. The narrator should be somebody who either has Green / Left Bona Fides [only Nixon can go to China…], somebody recognized as the voice of science [Steven Hawking or the late Carl Sagan], or somebody who people consider to be both credible and disinterested – like Oprah or, possibly, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

Andrey Levin

Re178:

Combining ice core data of past CO2 atmospheric concentration with current (from 1958) instrumental records from Mauna Loa is the same bull as combining bristlecone temperature proxies with current instrumental records.

Ice core CO2 proxies are extremely valuable research tool on geological scale, but their resolution is couple of centuries at best. Moreover, as it was disclosed by Jaworowsky in his more elaborate article:

Click to access zj21c97.pdf

the main problem is not relative reading from thousands years ago, but conversion of them to absolute readings in troublesome region of last century and a half, where trapped in ice CO2 undergoes phase change from calthrates (hydrates) when ice core samples are decompressed.

Stomata CO2 proxies, having way higher resolution of decades, not centuries, more and more pointing out that CO2 proxies from ice cores have sensitivity and resolution too low to be viable for CO2 concentration assessment for last couple of centuries, and carry too high systematic mistakes.

I believe so called “pre-industrial” CO2 atmospheric concentrations widely accepted in climate science are still waiting for their M&M to be corrected.

Hans Erren

re 179:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AGUFMPP41B..07V

Title:
A Significant Thirteenth-century CO2 Increase in Stomatal Frequency and ice core Records
Authors:
van Hoof, T.; Kaspers, K.; Wagner, F.; van de Wal, R.; Kuerschner, W.; Visscher, H.

Abstract
The climate of the first half of the last millennium is characterized by a transition from a relative warm period during medieval times (the Medieval Climatic Optimum) towards a more cooler period during the Little Ice Age (~AD 1300-1850). In several global and Northern-Hemispheric air-temperature reconstructions for the last millennium, this natural climate variability is represented by an air-temperature anomaly in the range of 0.2 to 1 OC. In contrast to the strongly increased atmospheric CO2 levels of the last century, ice-core CO2 measurements constrain the pre-industrial CO2 variability to a maximum of 12 ppmv, precluding a significant role for CO2 as the primary forcing factor of air-temperature changes during the last millennium. As an alternative to ice-core measurements, atmospheric CO2 reconstructions are currently available for the last millennium from stomatal frequency analysis performed on fossil leaves.A period where both methods consistently provide evidence for natural CO2 changes is the 13th century.The results of the two independent methods differ significantly in the amplitude of the estimated CO2 changes (10 ppmv ice, versus 34 ppmv stomatal frequency). Here, we compare stomatal frequency and ice core results by using a firn-diffusion model in order to assess the potential influence of smoothing during enclosure on the temporal resolution as well as the CO2 mixing ratios. The seemingly large discrepancies between the CO2 levels estimated by the contrasting methods, diminish when effects of natural smoothing of the ice-core record is simulated for the raw data of the stomatal frequency record. Results indicate that the differences derived by the two methods may be less significant than previously thought. Climate model calculations show that the 34 ppmv shift as detected in the stomata record could generate Northern-Hemisphere and global air-temperature responses that stay well within the constrained range of reconstructed air-temperature variability of the last millennium. To assess the exact influence of a dynamic CO2 regime on the air-temperature history of the last millennium, model studies simulating the air-temperature response to fluctuating CO2 levels in interaction with the other forcing factors are needed. However, this study already indicates that CO2 should be reconsidered as a significant pre-industrial climate forcing factor during the last millennium.

see also
http://www.stomatalfrequency.com/

richardT

#179
Jaworowsky’s article may be “elaborate”, but much of it is egregiously wrong. Take, for example, his acceptance of measured 19th century CO2 concentrations. The high concentrations and scatter reflect the crude analytical methods available in the early 19th Century, not atmospheric reality.
It’s deeply ironic that the skeptical community accepts these values without question, yet doubts the accuracy of the much higher quality measured 19th Century temperature record.
Also, be wary of stomatal based estimates of CO2 concentrations, some of the underlying data is questionable. I don’t know the article cited by #181, but other work by this group has been heavily criticized.

Hans Erren

Please note the bold part in the quote. The stomata group acknowledges that the difference between icecores and stomata is not as dramatic as suggested in their earlier publications. Two factors contribute to lower antarctic ice core CO2 values: decadal smoothing and remotenes from the northern hemispheric stomata sites.

The CO2 statement in the last part of the abstract is a non sequitur: Higher MWP atmosperic CO2 values would only point to a lower climate sensitivity

Paolo M.

#185: Van Hoof et al., before dealing with stomatal data, explicity say what their goal is:” In contrast to the strongly increased atmospheric CO2 levels of the last century, ice-core CO2 measurements constrain the pre-industrial CO2 variability to a maximum of 12 ppmv, precluding a significant role for CO2 as the primary forcing factor of air-temperature changes during the last millennium.”
Look at that “precluding“!
I agree with you that a 34 ppm change points to a lower sensitivity, but the authors point to a quite flat temperature variability and all explained by CO2 variability.

Gerald Machnee

Re #188 – **Many Inuit live in more conventional buildings, which are constructed mainly to keep the cold out. Unfortunately, with longer and warmer summers with 24-hour-a-day sunlight, this has turned many into ovens, Watt-Cloutier said. For the first time, air conditioners are in use in the Arctic.

Seasoned Inuit hunters used to be able to tell where the ice was safe, but because warmer seas have started to melt sea ice from its underside, even the most experienced hunters find it hard to gauge, and some fall through, she said.

“The glaciers are melting so quickly that where our hunters used to be able to cross safely, now it’s so unsafe that it’s become torrent rivers … and we’ve had a drowning as a result of that as well,” she said.**
Welcome to our world. We have been drowning for years in the south. “experienced hunters find it hard to gauge” Really?
Are they using energy conserving air conditioners. Get serious, when it was warm 70 years ago, there was no mass media to complain to. Many in the south do not have air conditioners.

Greg F

From Wiki

After roughly 1350, the climate grew colder during the Little Ice Age and the Inuit were forced to abandon hunting and whaling sites in the high Arctic. Bowhead whaling disappeared in Canada and Greenland (but continued in Alaska) and the Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet. Without whales, they lost access to essential raw materials for tools and architecture that were derived from whaling. Although the Inuit had always been nomadic, they were forced to move more and more often to maximize their return from hunting.

Those conventional buildings are at odds with a nomadic lifestyle. And further down.

The changing climate forced the Inuit to also look south, pressuring them into the marginal niches along the edges of the tree line that Indians had not occupied, or where they were weak enough to coexist with. It is hard to say with any precision when the Inuit stopped their territorial expansion. There is evidence that they were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador in the 17th century, when they first began to interact with colonial North American civilization.

James Erlandson

Changing times for Inuit (Wikipedia)

Today, Inuit work in all sectors of the economy, including mining, oil and gas, construction, government and administrative services. Many Inuit still supplement their income through hunting. Tourism is a growing industry in the Inuit economy. Inuit guides take tourists on dogsled and hunting expeditions, and work with outfitting organizations. About 30 percent of Inuit derive part-time income from their sculpture, carving and print making.

The settlement of land claims in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Northern Quebec has given the Inuit money and a framework to develop and expand economic development activities. New emerging businesses include real estate, tourism, airlines and offshore fisheries.

It seems that “real estate, tourism, airlines and offshore fisheries” will be helped by a … more gentle … climate.

richardT

#185
Van Hoof et al. show that their stomata-based results are compatible with the ice-core CO2 records after smoothing. But they don’t show that the rapid variability in CO2 concentrations they reconstruct are physically plausible.
In the eleventh century, they reconstruct a 24ppmv drop in CO2 in just over 20 years. That’s almost the same rate of change as seen in at Mauna Loa between 1960 and 1980. It’s difficult to explain such variability pre-industrialisation: it would take a large and rapid change in ocean or land carbon cycles.
There are several possibly confounding factors in van Hoof’s work, for example the potential for different stomatal densities on sun and shade leaves, or for trees with different amount of water stress.

bernie

#179 and #181
How do we know the flow of causality for the Stomata proxies and can temperature changes confound the results?

If my earlier question got blocked could someone explain why? Is it that dumb a question?

richardT

#198
Modern atmospheric gas concentrations have been hugely perturbed by anthropic emissions. The oceans are absorbing some of the excess CO2 as they move towards a new equilibrium.

In the eleventh century, there would still have been a huge turnover of CO2 through the land and ocean carbon cycles, but you would expect the system to be near equilibrium. And in a system near equilibrium, its going to be difficult to get rapid changes of this magnitude.

The very strong El Nino year in 1998 caused atmospheric CO2 to increased by just over 2ppmv (after removing the anthropic trend). The rates of change of up to 1ppmv/yr reconstructed by van Hoof and coworkers require repeated events of this magnitude. Their reconstructions may be right, but they need to more to show they are plausible.

Chas

Re#183
Looking at an old (popular) chemistry text book (1877) it does seem that the analytical methods for determining co2 in air were a bit agricultural :

” The first exact determinations of its amount were made by Thenard in 1812. His process consisted in exhausting a large glass balloon of almost 10 lites capacity, in which baryta water was previously placed. By turning the stopcock a fresh quantity of air was allowed to enter the globe: This was permitted to remain in contact with the baryta water for some time, the absorbtion of carbon dioxide being promoted by shaking the ballon. The process of exhaustion and replenishment was repeated until a sufficient quantity of barium carbonate was formed. From its weight, together with the number of times of exhaustion, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air could be calculated. Thenard found that the proportion of this gas was about 4 volumes in 10,000 volumes of air.
The subsequent researches of Saussure,Boussingault,Angus Smith and Roscoe have confirmed this result.They have futher shown that the amount of carbon dioxide in air is not abolutely constant. It would appear that during the night the amount of carbon dioxide increases: it is sensibly greater during the prelevance of dry winds and during fogs,as much as 8 or 9 volumes of carbon dioxide in 10,000 of air being frquently noticed on a foggy day. County air also contains less carbon dioxide than the air of large towns. sea air contains less carbon dioxide than land air. As the mean of a number of observations made on the air of the Irish Sea and of the Atlantic Ocean, it appears that 10,000 vols. of sea air contains 3 vols.of carbon dioxide. This proportion is constant in various latitudes and is not affected by the differences in the season of the year or hour of the day.”

But can anyone tell me why their estimates were sytematically high?

John A

3-4 parts in 10,000 = 300-400 parts in 1,000,000 = 300-400 ppm.

Unless I missed something?

richardT

#200
Yes, CO2 changes on a daily and seasonaly timescales, but van Hoof et al are reconstructing annual variability, so these short term changes won’t affect their model as this type of variability is present in both their calibration and reconstruction periods.

#201
Thanks for this quote. It’s not surprising that they had large errors with this method, but its not obvious to me why their estimates were biased high.

#202
The different between glacial and interglacial CO2 concentrations is about 80ppm (190 vs 270 ppm). Exactly which factors were responsible for this draw down are unclear (most models I’m aware of have problems getting a reduction of this size), but its clear that the huge changes in ocean circulation between these two states played a large role, perhaps aided by fertilisation with iron-rich dust. At the termination of the glacials CO2 concentrations rise, but relatively slowly, taking several thousand years to change completely.

The 34ppm variability reconstructed for the last millennium is almost half as large as the full glacial-interglacial change (and the changes occur with amazing rapidity), yet the variability in ocean circulation are much smaller in this time window.

What’s important here isn’t the rate at which the oceans can absorb (or loose) CO2, but the rate at which these processes can change.

#203
Your calculations are correct, but one would expect a mean of 270ppm for pre-industrial CO2 concentrations.

Hans Erren

“But can anyone tell me why their estimates were sytematically high?”

Because they weren’t sampling on Mauna Loa or at the south pole…

jae

Can someone tell me why a global CO2 monitor was put on top of a volcano, when the second most abundant gas emitted by a volcano is CO2 (after water)?

Dan

There was a comment on Hegerl et al. (2006) in Nature (requires subscription). Has anyone read it?

UC

Here’s a brief summary,

Schneider:

Climate proxies are often selected on the basis of their correlations with instrumental temperature data, as in the reconstruction underlying the analysis of Hegerl et al. Using such proxies in regression models to reconstruct past temperatures leads to selection bias, resulting in an overestimation of the correlation between proxies and temperatures and an underestimation of uncertainties.

Hegerl reply:

We account for uncertainty in temperature reconstructions as fully as possible.

Hans Erren

re 208:

Westerland is located in the german mudflats with predominant westerlies, it’s location was choosen because it was remote.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Westerland,+Germany&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=6&ll=55.128649,8.305664&spn=7.039687,25.224609&om=1

hardly the place where stomata forests grow. If you look at the Poona data you get a better idea of the enourmous fluctuations in a forest environment.

richardT

#216
Wagner et al use stomatal counts on Betula pubescens to reconstruct CO2. Unfortunately, the stomatal density on B. pubescens does not correlate with atmospheric CO2 concentration. See
Eide, W. & Birks, H.H. Stomatal frequency of Betula pubescens and Pinus sylvestris shows no proportional relationship with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Nordic Journal of Botany 24: 327-339.

#215 Thanks, I should have checked where it was. So much for randomness.

mikep

I have just been reading a very good new little book by Leonard Smith on Chaos. He distinguishes very clearly between uncertainty in exactly what the initial condition is (the classic chaos problem), uncertainty about the structure of the model (i.e. what to include etc) and uncertainty about the correct parameter values. This led to me to his papers including this one

Click to access 56_PredictPastPredictPresent_2002.pdf

A couple of quotes

The continuous feedback from making forecasts on new unseen (out-of-sample) data is largely denied the climate modeller, who is constrained by the nature of the problem to forever violate one of the first maxims of undergraduate statistics: never restrict your analysis to in-sample statistics. By construction, climate modelling is an in-sample science. And the fundamentally transient nature of problem makes it harder still.

Inasmuch as climate forecasting is a transient experiment, we launch only once. It is not clear how one might combine a collection of single runs of different climate models into a sensible probability forecast. But by studying the in-sample behaviour of ensembles under a variety of models, we can tune each model until an ensemble of initial conditions under each and every individual model can at least bound the in-sample observations, say from 1950 to 2000. If ensembles are then run into the future, we can look for the variables (space and time scales) on which the individual model ensembles bound the past and agree (in distribution) regarding the future.
Of course agreement does not ensure relevance to the future; our collection of models can share a common flaw. But if differences in the subtle details of different models that have similar (plausible) in-sample performance are shown to yield significantly different forecast distributions, then no coherent picture emerges from the overall ensemble. Upon adding a new model to this mix, we should not be surprised by a major change to the overall forecast distribution. This may still occur even if “each and every one” of the current models has similar forecast distributions, but in this case removing (and hopefully, adding) one model is less likely to do so. In any event, we can still use these differences in the forecast distributions to gain physical insight, and improve each model (individually) using the in-sample data yet again. But as long as the details can be shown to matter significantly, we are sunk.

JerryB

Jeff,

Perhaps the mosquitoes got into the hourly data recorder. -30 C in
June reminds me of the + 128 F day in Ohio in December: not plausible.

The daily min/max data at the following links show positives.
69.5800 -140.1800 7.0 CA KOMAKUK BEACH
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/all/40302100685.dly
68.3000 -133.4800 68.0 CA INUVIK
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/all/40302202570.dly

Steve Sadlov

RE: #222 – Also covertly supported by the NRDC, like RC is?

John Lang

February Temperatures for the US from NOAA are in: 34th coolest (or 79th warmest if you want to remove the spin.) Some posts above had speculated this would be the case.

“The average temperature in February 2007 was 32.9 F. This was -1.8 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 34th coolest February in 113 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

1.56 inches of precipitation fell in February. This was -0.46 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 16th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.00 inches per decade.”

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

Is there any point to be made that the precipitation trend is 0? I note there is less chance of the climate scientists playing around with these numbers. I thought global warming was supposed to increase water vapour which in turn might result in more precipitation.

Jim Edwards

#220

Re: Ambient temp in arctic and AC use [#188]

I was a commercial HVAC tech in San Jose in the mid 90’s. There were many days when I worked on the rooftop on a comfortable 65-75 F / 17-24 C day while AC units were running like crazy all around me.

The driving force behind much AC use today is the internal heat load, both sensible [lighting, computers, photocopiers] and latent [humans, coffee pots]. This will especially be the case in a highly insulated and weather stripped bldg – like the bldgs these Inuit live in.

I’d want to know if the evil culture of American capitalism had forced these Inuit to become more affluent and install culturally genocidal technology like electric lighting and home electronics.

jae

Nobody had air conditioning when I was a kid, and now just about everyone has one in warmer climates. I suspect the Inuits are just like the rest of us; they have a better standard of living and want more comfortable surroundings. They are getting “spoiled,” like me. Naturally, the envirofreaks will blame it all on AGW.

cbone

Looks like the podcast should be here after the debate.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6263392

jae

226. Here’s the link.

fFreddy

Re #228, Peter Lloyd

Lindzen’s Daily Mail article can be found here. Peter’s right, it is rather fun …

bernie

Assuming that this an open thread, does anyone have a link to James Hansen’s original June 1988 Congressional
testimony? I tried searching for it with no luck. There are plenty of references but no actual testimony.
Any help will be much appreciated.

Chas

RichardT #205: some of Angus Smith’s CO2 measurements are given in his book “Air and Rain” (1872) and they seem surprisingly repeatable:

“CARBONIC ACID IN SCOTLAND.
Having written so far, it was desired to throw more
light on the subject by obtaining specimens from purely
rural and hilly districts ; and for this purpose Scotland
was preferred. The uniformity in the numbers is something
remarkable. There is no difference in the second
decimal place, even in one instance, until we enter a town.
I must therefore consider ‘0336 per cent, as the amount of carbonic acid in the pure winds of the north of this island.”

This book also has tables of Sausure’s earlier (1820’s) measurements about which Angus Smith comments:
“He used a vessel of 34 litres in volume, and washed the air with baryta-water, collecting the carbonate of baryta precipitated. This is a laboriousprocess; but, considering the great accuracy of the operator, and the long experience which he gained, we may place great reliance on his work. I am disposed to think that there may be a little excess in his results………

The book itself can be read or downloaded from:
http://www.archive.org/details/airrainbeginning00smitiala

Hans Erren

re 222:

This comment from me on http://www.climatepolicy.org/?p=10#comments is still pending 😀

Hans Erren Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

March 5th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
[Response: Without the CO2 feedback we can’t explain the changes in climate evident in the paleo record. This is widely underderstood and non-controversial. -phiggins]

Can you please give some peer reviewed references for this claim? Shaviv finds empirical evidence for a low CO2 climate sensitivity.

Dave B

#226 here is the link to lindzen’s article in the daily mail. well done!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440869&in_page_id=1965&in_a_source=

Steve Sadlov

RE: #244 – The intro of political judgement was indeed a tactical mistake. Of course, at least some of the leading firebrands in “the movement” are indeed neo-marxist luddites in fact. But that need not be included in a public critique.

MarkR

#244 Peter. Agree with you about the science of the program. The Politics part may not have been politic, but it was true.

Interesting how Margaret Thatcher started it all by giving scientists money to prove that CO2 was damaging, so she could go for nuclear power, and be free of the unreliable oil supply from the Middle East, and the political coal Miners Union. Also how the Thatcher inspired scientific effort morphed into the IPCC.

Seeing Lindzen again reminded me I saw him on BBC News 24 Hard Talk several years ago, when he was critical of the Warmers.

The interviewer asked Lindzen how come climatologists could be so wrong.

Lindzen replied, “Remember when you were at school and all the clever ones opted for climatology?”

Interviewer: “No!”

Lindzen: “Exactly.”

Also, Tony Blair knows this AGW is a scam. All his statements begin, “If what we are being told is true…”

He is not hitching himself to that bandwagon. The fact is it suits British interests to scare the public just now, for the same reason Thatcher had. Blair wants to get the Nuclear power option past the environmentalists.

Ian S

Someone seems to be uploading parts of the “Swindle” documentary to youtube, so far there only seem to be the first to pieces but hopefully more will come later. I’m sure it will end up there eventually 😉 The pieces are unfortunately very short — http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=onebush333

bruce

Re #246: Steven Milloy makes a more than valid point about Gore’s blatant hypocrisy. In closing he says:

But it’s the carbon offset purchases through which Gore really validates application of the $300-man epithet to him. His company buys the offsets for their employees. There’s no cost to him. He benefits politically ‘€” and perhaps financially, as well ‘€” from them. He then advocates that the rest of us who cannot so easily offset are carbon production suffer myriad personal sacrifices.

While Gore relaxes in his posh pool house and heated pool, you should be taking shorter and colder showers, and hanging your laundry outside to dry. As Gore jets around the world in first-class comfort to hob-nob with society’s elites about his self-declared “moral imperative”, you should travel less and bike to work. You should use less electricity while Al and his wife, Tipper, use 20 times the national average. Now that’s a real carbon offset.

“Are you ready to change the way you live?” Gore literally meant you ‘€” and only you.

Jetting around the world in first class comfort! I have had a look at the seat maps for British Airways and United Airlines. In a BA 777 first class contains 14 seats, and the same length of fuselage in economy contains 81 seats. In a United Airlines first class contains 14 seats and the same length of fuselage in economy contains 90 seats. The first class section in a 747 is in the nose cabin which narrows to the front, so the 777 ratio is probably the better number. If we take that ratio, then when he flies, our Al is using 5.8 times (81 divided by 14) times as much fuel, and emitting 5.8 times as much CO2 as us plebs who are sitting down the back.

“Do as I say, not as I do”. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

absolutely

SWindle available via BitTorrent:
here

Julian Flood

Re 244: ‘the solid data of the solar cycle’

I think I saw the solar activity graph cut off at 1980. Let’s hope that science will prevail in this argument, not the habit of using dodgy or incomplete data.

JF

Martin J

Apologies if this has already been mentioned-as with Welikerocks (5)- but the UK’s TV station Cannel 4, has just screened (4 March)a remarkable debunking of the whole carbon forced Global Warming agenda. It included contributions from many notable scientists and former Green campaigners. I believe Ross McKitrick also assisted in its making. Although followers of CA would have heard little new, I would say it is the best TV critique of the general consensus I have seen. Further information is available at Channel4.com/science.

It was revealed that UK’s former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, embraced the idea of carbon forced Global Warming as a means of justifying a move away from coal power electricity generation and into nuclear. The British State had a history of confrontation with the coal mining unions and after major disputes in the 1970’s and 1980’s the Government decided to wipe out the miners once and for all; fear of man-made Global Warming suited her purpose exactly. Mrs. Thatcher gave the UK Met Office its first major grant to investigate “… carbon forced Global Warming” and so justify the new more diverse Energy policy and the reduced role for the Coal Industry. The Met Office has not looked back since.

The rest, as they say, is history.

UC

..or maybe warning stickers on some publications

As in here or here . Dont take too seriously, and have a nice weekend!

fFreddy

Re #257, Martin J

The British State had a history of confrontation with the coal mining unions and after major disputes in the 1970’s and 1980’s the Government decided to wipe out the miners once and for all

Well, I remember the 1970s, with power cuts, three-day weeks, “who runs the country” and all that. So I would rather phrase this as :
The British coal miners’ union had a history of exploiting their monopoly position to the enormous detriment of the rest of the country. In the 1970’s, successive governments failed to rein them in. In the 1980’s, the government succeeded, to the enormous benefit of the rest of the country.

Steve McIntyre

262. except that climateaudit was a reaction to realclimate, which started first and spent much of its initial energy slagging M&M.

Hans Erren

re 263:
I meant opponent

Ian S

#253 absolutely

Thanks for the torrent link. There was only one seed when I started so I theorize that might have been you? For those of you not yet into torrents, I recommend utorrent — http://www.utorrent.com/download.php as a really excellent torrent client.

John A

Re: #263 Actually RealClimate shows the feedback principle rather well of showing up before the ClimateAudit cause.

Peter Lloyd

re: 261/fFreddy

Right. I remember that period as well. The real problem was that the miners’ union was exploiting the miners – it had never done its real job of looking to the future over miners’ interests at a time when imported coal was becoming cheaper and cheaper and it was inevitable that only the most efficient pits were going to be able to survive with huge investment in new automation technology. Instead of fighting for new industries in the mining areas and for retraining schemes for miners, the unions were interfering in foreign policy and playing power politics over “beer and sandwiches” at No.10.

The miners suffered at the end of the day by being royally reamed by both Government and unions. Maggie Thatcher was good at breaking up an impossible situation, but gave no thought of what to put in its place, so she finished by dividing the country as never since the religious wars.

Sorry to get so far off track, but that whole period makes me boil – but never expected it to be the source of the equally divisive Climate War!

Steve Sadlov

RE: #227 – Jim you nailed it. It’s the incremental energy dissipation that made them need AC.

Steve Sadlov

Looks like the current July 1 – June 30 precipitation season, given the fact we get most of our precip between Oct and May, is going to go down as an official drought year for most of California. Very, very La Nina-esque (the dry version). Also, in the past, time of PDO transition have tended to have more droughts of the short, sharp, very severe type here. I am a bit worried.

T J Olson

Anti-“denialist” reaction to the broadcast of the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is glossed here.

Weak, if this report is accurate.

Peter Lloyd

Review of Durkin from The Independent:

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/dominic_lawson/article2318675.ece

bernie

#274
So bottom line should fossilized stomata be used as proxies for CO2 or temperature?

John Lang

The documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is very powerful. Steve and Ross are in the credits. When this gets into greater circulation, the scam/swindle will be over.

Ian S

I was looking around for reaction to “Swindle” and stopped over at realclimate.org and indeed they do have a reaction (my goodness is a place ever repugnant, their arrogance is almost overpowering — I had not been there in a while). They were “disappointed” sarcastically claiming they were expecting more than the rehashing of old arguments ( however I suppose “An inconvenient truth was completely original”). Then I glanced down at the next article dismissing a paper by Henrik Svensmark. Lo and behold they express their faux disappointed again (ooo ahhh a cloud chamber what else do you have …)! My goodness. I started to get visions of the Miranda Priestly in “The devil wears Prada”. I have to say they have become truly excellent at conveying a snobby tone of superiority — wow. Throughout the site they seem to emphasize strongly how nothing is of value unless it’s peer-reviewed ( unless of course it’s pro-global warming article) and then when it is peer-reviewed, well … peer-review is not perfect (ah ya guys, believe us, we know 😉 ). Sorry, their arrogance got to me. Felt the need to rant.

John A

I have to save this from the RealClimate filter just in case:

Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct; however they misinterpret it. The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can’t even see the lag because its so small. The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback: see RC again for more.

Where is the misinterpretation? If T rise precedes CO2 rise by eight centuries then CO2 cannot be forcing T rise. There is no “anti-correlation”, its a delayed response.

Unless of course you’re claiming that positive feedback implies going backwards in time, in which case all bets are off.

Carbon dioxide rise appears to be a delayed response to temperature rise. The fact that the current T rise is happening during a CO2 rise implies nothing at all, because its almost certainly a spurious correlation that does not imply causation.

Also in the ice core record, carbon dioxide continues to rise AFTER temperatures begins to fall, so no feedback is event there either.

Andrey Levin

Re: 258

Simply put, stomata is tiny hole in leaf/needle to adsorb CO2 from atmosphere for photosynthesis. See “stomata” at Wikipedia.

When CO2 concentration in the air is higher, plants need less and/or smaller stomatal openings. Some plants demonstrate remarkably stable correlation, allowing to reconstruct atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the past.

Inevitably, smaller and/or less stomatal density leads to less water loss through evaporation, significantly increasing water use efficiency of plants.

For more details take a look at:

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/s/subject_s.jsp

and look for “Stomatal conductance”

Hans Erren

re 287:

John, although CO2 is lagging in the icecores to temperature (due to the sodaboiling effect), this doesn’t imply that Co2 doesn’t warm, as Shaviv has shown the warming of CO2 is 1.3 K/2xCO2. In the following graph this is calcultated (Shaviv value is magenta line.

What follows is that the outgassing effect is stronger than the forcing, which is logic because that prevented a runaway outgassing.

John A

Re #290

although CO2 is lagging in the icecores to temperature (due to the sodaboiling effect), this doesn’t imply that Co2 doesn’t warm, as Shaviv has shown the warming of CO2 is 1.3 K/2xCO2

I’m sorry Hans but that makes no sense at all.

If the ice cores show CO2 rise as a delayed reaction to T rise (and they do every time) and never show T rise as a result of CO2 rise, it means that the real sensitivity of T to CO2 is minute.

Furthermore, since the theoretic T response to CO2 concentration is logarithmic, then there is no single value for what CO2 doubling is supposed to produce. If CO2 was a lot lower in the past, then the response of T to CO2 rise should be apparent in the ice cores – but that isn’t what happens.

So the Greenhouse Hypothesis has two problems: a lack of any feedback (since CO2 can continue to rise well after T has already begun to fall and a false physical response that is supposedly imputed to CO2 doubling.