Climate Audit

John Lang

To Willis and Jae, I’ve found this article you might be interested in Arbiters of Energy

The links are a little hard to follow through to get to the whole article. It is a just an article but you will find more detailed papers from the scientists who wrote the article and are using NASA’s MODIS and CERES satellites.

The article contains charts on water vapour content of the atmosphere, IR radiation absorbed by water vapour versus CO2 and actual measurements of IR energy lost to space versus the models as in the charts below.

John Lang

Having some problems getting charts to show up. Here they are again.

CO2 Absorption Versus Water Vapour

Actual IR Radiation to Space Measured by Satellite

jae

Willis: Isn’t the half-life of SO2 in the atmosphere very short? I think it forms cloud condensation nuclei and gets rained out quite quickly.

Aileni Noyle

re4.

Who remembers Mrs. Thatcher’s Incomprehensibles – The Goon Show. She did enough damage as a junior minister without going on to prove the Tories have no sense. Look at Cameron. But then they are politicians – all of them.

bernie

I wanted to go back to the Lobell & Field article commented on in Unthreaded #6 (#319, 322, 323 and 326).

Now my statistics are rusty but in keeping with prior discussions on CA I am a bit stunned by the way this research was done. First it seems to me that year to year chnages in t(min) and t(max) are very likely correlated and that including them in the same regression equation is extemely odd. In addition, even if the tmin and tmax were derived from correct temperature series when you use the first differnece then you essentially have to also include an interaction term in the regression equation wouldn’t you? I haven’t kept up with the econ literature for nearly 30 years, but when did it become fashionable not to include your model equations in the write up?

Most importantly and to my mind stunning is the exclusion of any price variable in this model. It looks like the model focuses purely on yield. I would assume therefore that a poor harvest followed by higher prices that pulls more marginal land into production. Simialrly higher prices operating independently would pulllower yieldingland into production.

Finally, I don’t get how this is a global model but the growing seasons are restricted to Northern Hemisphere growing seasons. Can someone explain?

Overall, as someone else has already indicated this is not a very impressive article. Any commodity analysts should take a look because you may be able to help determine how meaningful are the findings in this paper. To me it smells of a conclusion in search of some data.

Pat Frank

How does a high 1980’s-1990’s sulfate aerosol anomaly coexist with a steady decrease in cloudiness in both hemispheres and over both land and ocean between 1952-1997? Wouldn’t one expect an excursion away from a secular trend in cloudiness if anthropogenic SO2 was mucking up the dynamics?

Norris, J. R. 2005 Multidecadal changes in near-global cloud cover and estimated cloud cover radiative forcing J. Geophys. Res. 110, D08206, doi:10.1029/2004JD005600.

bernie

#14
Ken
Your practical experience confirmed my initial reactions to the article. How do prices impact your choice of acreage? How do you make decisions year over year as to how much and which land to put under wheat, maize, etc. Overall the article makes little statistical nor agricutlural seense sense, . The order effects are so small that given the trend, i.e., warmer temperatures, they have to be benign unless there are large areas of crop production that are right on the margin. There is soemthing really odd about how this model was reported – in this instance they have stressed the R2 but visual inspection of their scatter charts makes me somewhat skeptical.

S. Hales

I have a question for any data nut out there. Is the raw station data for TMAX and TMIN for all the stations in the GHCN world network here ???

If this is the raw data before it is massaged for V1 and V2 and gridded then it seems that it would be a simple task to inspect this daily data extract annual values and simulate the gridded data and see how it compares with the gridded cells produced by Hansen.

bernie

Lobell and Field reference

JerryB

Re #17,

Not all GHCN stations report daily min/max temperature data.
Also, many of the stations at that site are not included
among the stations for which monthly GHCN data has been
collected. GISS uses the latter as its main source of
monthly mean temp data.

At http://www.john-daly.com/ghcndsum.smp
you can find some stats on the data at the GHCN daily site.

Mike Rankin

I just ran across this reference on Debunkers:

link

showing commentary by novelist/science fiction writer Orson Scott Card on the Hockey Stick and M&M’s efforts. Thought I should share with other visitors.

Peter D. Tillman

NY Times on Al Gore backlash

“From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype”

[free registration required and worthwhile]

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

.
.
.

Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

Pretty evenhanded report, especially considering where it was published.

Happy reading–
Pete Tillman

bernie

Ken:
You raised an interesting issue as to the strategic and tactical value of addressing all the issues raised by the proponents of the reliability of temperature measurements and as a consequence a strong AGW effect. The strategic imperative I believe is to push hard on the validity of the temperature measures and the more general issue of insisting on appropriate processes for doing “science”. The latter is Steve and Ross’s major focus and the absence of full disclosure is the IPCC protected cancer. Tactically, some of us, i.e., me , do not have the skills, knowledge or time to address the major issues except to cheer from the sidelines. However, we still know enough to pick off the flawed arguments of those jumping on the AGW bandwagon and adding to its inertia. To some extent these secondary issues are linked to the general issue, but will not really sway the IPCC and related vested interests. We probably need more polemicists like Michael Crichton but with more scientific credentials to level the playing field. In the mean time, we should keep putting more information in the hopper and those with skills and knowledge should not be afraid to ask for the support and help they need. Steve should certainly not be afraid to exert as much editiorial direction as he sees as needed.

Peter Lloyd

Two of UK’s climate researchers warn against exaggerated claims for AGW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/

above link, then click on Listen Again, today’s top story.

And listen carefully between the lines.

Can I hear the sound of a pendulum hovering before the backswing?

Follow the Money

“Can I hear the sound of a pendulum hovering before the backswing?”

Nothing like open talk of direct “green” taxes on the British public to raise the suspicions of the British public about the underlying premises of the government’s actions.

The reality is carbon caps and trading are costing them more, but the losses are not readily apparent – one of the profitable advantages of cap and trade, though the people may be awakening to that too via the comical trade practices of direct from the consumer carbon credits (paying extra for an airline ticket, Al Gore’s business, etc.)

absolutely

More on sun and climate: here

bernie

Absolutely:
Robert Baker has no apparent track record in this area – apparently does dynamic modelling. Obviously he could be passionate about
this like M&M and many others. Just that I couldn’t find anything he has written prior to this press release.

Peter D. Tillman

More on Gore:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009804

“Whose Ox Is Gored?
The media discover the former vice president’s environmental exaggerations and hypocrisy.”

The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, “emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal.”
.
.
.
Mr. Gore requested that SRA [the new mine operator] “engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices.” The Tennessean dryly notes that Mr. Gore wrote the letter the week after the paper posed a series of questions to him about his involvement with the zinc mines.

Happy reading–
Pete Tillman

Nicholas

Here’s a strange little article by Orson Scott Card which tells the story Steve the Canadian Businessman (wonder who he is) and his friends:

Civilization Watch

Barry B.

Very frustrating. It seems there is a big difference between the preview and what is actually posted. Go here: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/cornyld.asp

S. Hales

#37
Willis thanks for your reply. The following applies to the MSU record for Northern and Southern Hemispheres of the MSU record from 12/1978 to the present. The two arrays are NH and SH and contain the relative monthly anomaly for each. The moving correlation is a 68 month moving correlation through time. This reveals periods of very high correlation to periods like today of very low correlation. There seems to be an emerging periodicity in the data or lagged responses to different forcings of different signs.

The simple correlation coefficient for the two arrays is .61 which means very simply that 61% of the time that the two arrays move in the same direction. That is what I meant by high correlation. The ~5 year moving correlation has values as high as .72 and as low as .17. Interestingly there is evidence of your “decoupling” occuring in 2002 and continuing until today where the correlation coefficient fell from .72 to .2 today on a ~5 year moving correlation. I would expect in the coming years a return to high correlation if there is periodicity (or lagged responses) in the behavior of the temperature profile of the two hemispheres. I hadn’t graphed this function in years, I think the last time was in 1999 or so when correlations were high and had been stable for years except for a brief divergence between 1995 and 1997. So when you spoke of decoupling I was skeptical. But there is a definite decoupling beginning in 2002 and continuing until today. This is quite surprising to me.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #43 – You are in a very interesting area. I never cease to be amazed at how dramatically the weather there can vary over short time frames. A truely “fire and ice” type of place. Some might say that about say, the midwest, but at least there, you don’t go from 90 deg F and humid, with an air mass from the Gulf, to freezing with an air mass from Western Canada, in a single week in November, LOL! ….

bernie

#39
Barry:
This looks like a helpful article. As an agronomist, why would a longitudinal analysis of yields not include data on either price or total acreage under the crop. Surely farmers increase or decrease their acreage based on price. I noted during a quick skim of this article that for example the % of corn grown under irrigation varies through time and has declined inrecent years. I would assume that this non-irrigated land with its lower yields would be at the margin and would be added or reduced as market conditions dictate. Its as though the economic behavior of the farmer is being ignored. Is there something I am overlooking?

bernie

#43
Ralph:
It is heartening to see the backgrounds of people interested in and contributing to this site. A huge reservoir of scientific and practical knowledge.
My surmise is that there is probably an optimal temperature/precipitation relationship with yield and probably a pretty complex one. Statistically this would argue for some kind of interaction effect variable in the regression equation or model that Lobell and Field used. Since they never defined their model, we do not know if they included such a variable. Let me also pose the same questions I posed to Barry: What impact does price (and/or government incentives/disincentives) have on your decision to keep land under a particular crop and how do you decide which land to drop or switch?

Aileni Noyle

I have just read that New Scientist was ‘inclined to ignore’ C4’s ‘Swindle’.
I am having difficulty getting my head around this. Are they going crazy, is this Post Normal Science?

S. Hales

#52

Aileni, Of course its post normal science. What really bugs me is that the skeptics can never put together a decent analysis. They keep trodding over the same barren landscape and commit egregious errors. It is just incompetence on their part. Hans Erren argues from the solid framework of sensitivities, CO2 lifetime and relative rates of change. These are all fertile fields for the skeptics to grow their fruit. But they continue cultivating weak arguments on CO2/Temp ice core lags as if that’s evidence of no effect. But lagged responses in the poor resolution of the ice cores is what one might expect. The 800 year lag encompases about 1/6th of the ice age cycle but the other 5/6ths of cycle length encompass a variety of lagged responses to increases in CO2 and insolation. These are the normal feedbacks with variable lags. The magnitude of the temp swings seem to indicate a diminished role for CO2 and a major role for insolation as well as ocean heat content, as the Milankovitch cycle progresses. See, the skeptics could get creative with the ice cores but they don’t. They are incompetent when it comes to the media. It really ticks me off.

bernie

Barry
I can quite imagine that the total farmed acreage is probably pretty near constant. And if Lobell and Field had even acknowledged the price variable and discounted it, then I would have little to complain about. Alas they (and the follow up article) simply ignored it – as if taxing hydrocarbons would have no impact on CO2 emissions.
To your point, however, there still may be sufficient shifting at the margin to explain a significant portion of Lobell and Fields results. I just found this which suggests that the volume of land can vary fairly significantly – and, therefore, I assume possibly the yield though I have to imagine that the actual decision may be only indirectly if at all connected to yield estimates. Now this is clearly a complex issue and my naive view is that the Lobell and Field’s model is far too simple to warrant the conclusions that it reaches. The model also suggests there is a mindset that “if you only have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.” with AGW as the hammer and any time series data a nail.

I guess this topic is useful if it serves to demonstrate how potentially bad data is feeding into other studies and that many of these studies are peculiarly flawed when viewed by the uninitiated skeptics. However, I do not want to take us too far from the intent of this site.

JerryB

Re #34,

> I didn’t know that the daily data was not the sole source of the gridded monthly data.

Let me express some of the differences in a different way.

Of the 32,815 locations for which the daily GHCN site has data,
about 16,334 of the files contain temperature data, more than
twice the number of locations included in the monthly GHCN
temperature data files. The station list of the daily GHCN
files includes many towns/cities not listed in the station
list of the monthly GHCN data. The station list of monthly
GHCN data include many cities/towns not included in the
station list of the daily GHCN data.

In other words, do not let the presence of GHCN in the names
of both collections of data cause you to infer a relationship
that may be misleading.

Ralph Baskett

Re: 50
Bernie,
With regard to your question:

“What impact does price (and/or government incentives/disincentives) have on your decision to keep land under a particular crop and how do you decide which land to drop or switch?”

Profit should be the deciding factor but there are several qualifications: A higher price may not produce a larger profit if costs outrun prices. Landlords usually insist that a higher value crop be planted even if the price is low because it produces greater rental return, i.e. rent for cotton ground is about twice the rent for soybean ground. Farming areas such as the U. S. Midwest do not have any profitable alternative crops to grow such as cotton or rice which are presently suffering from low prices. Government farm programs in the U. S., China, the European Union and other countries have so large an effect on the price that there is really no true market. Among other consequences, these programs tend to cause crops to be grown no matter what the price is. Input costs such as equipment, chemicals, land prices or rents are relative to the price of the commodity so that eliminating the subsidies would bankrupt the farm industry’€”for example, you cannot renegotiate the price you paid for farmland and farm equipment.
At present, the government’s ethanol requirements and subsidies have caused the corn price to almost double and this is moving other commodity prices as well. Although it is hard to get an unbiased assessment of the economic and environmental consequences of producing ethanol from corn to replace some gasoline consumption, I suspect it will be a lose-lose solution for everyone but the farmer’€”higher prices for fuel, meat, eggs, milk and many other foods with practically no environmental benefit. High corn prices pull up soybean prices and are causing many southern farmers to switch and reduce cotton and rice acreage. Over the longer term, this should cause cotton and rice prices to increase if the corn price bubble does not burst. Commodity prices are dependent upon the overall economy. They are the first to decline and the last to recover. The bottom line: rational analysis is the exception rather than the rule.

James Erlandson

Re 59: “She said the lease has to be viewed in a “1973 context, not a 2007 context.”

1973 was four years after the Cuyahoga River (in Cleveland, Ohio) famously caught fire. And one year after the Federal Water Pollution Amendments of 1972, better known as the Clean Water Act. The bad effects of water pollution were not unknown in 1973.

DocMartyn

Sun’s pulse ‘points to rain’
By Matthew Warren

March 19, 2007 12:00am
DROUGHT-BREAKING rains across eastern Australia have been predicted in new modelling by a scientist who believes massive pulses in the sun’s magnetic field are helping to drive the Earth’s climate systems.

If proven, the research will make the prediction of floods and droughts in Australia far more reliable and influence models projecting future climate change.

Robert Baker, from the University of New England, claims to have found a strong relationship between the rhythmic pulsing of the sun’s magnetic field and weather systems, particularly in the southern hemisphere.

The sun’s magnetic emissions are known to peak every 11 years, a phenomenon demonstrated by increased sunspot activity. The sun also switches poles every 11 years. It last flipped in 2001.

Associate Professor Baker said modelling of the sun’s magnetic activity showed high rainfall during times of high activity and drought when the sun was stable.

This suggested the fluctuations impacted on the upper atmosphere, which was in turn reflected in changes in the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), the measure of air pressure over the Pacific Ocean used as a reliable indicator of drought and flood.

Dr Baker said the most intense droughts in eastern Australia, including the Federation drought, tended to occur every 22 years, about a year after the southern pole of the sun flipped and became positively charged.

In a paper, which has been submitted to the journal Solar Terrestrial Physics for peer review, he claims changes in solar magnetic fields can explain about 50 per cent of the variation in the SOI.

The impact of solar magnetism is more noticeable in the southern hemisphere and in regions such as eastern Australia because more variable climate is driven by proximity to large oceans.

He said this relationship between the sun and climate required further research because it might help to explain an important but little understood natural cycle influencing the Earth’s climate systems.

“The sun drives the whole system,” he said. “There is a natural impact that the sun has in terms of weather patterns maybe over a century.”

Dr Baker said the sun appeared to follow a longer-term magnetic cycle of about 80 years, meaning it might be possible to predict floods and droughts for the next 30 years based on historical records from the mid-1920s.

Dr Baker said the SOI was currently following a similar pattern to that recorded after 1924 when eastern Australia enjoyed heavy falls after a period of prolonged drought.

Dr Baker’s model puts a more scientific and transparent theory to the concepts first developed by long-range weather forecasters Lennox Walker and Inigo Jones.

It also suggests there may be a longer 500-year solar cycle, which may help explain climate variability over the past centuries, including periods of unexplained climate variability such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

Dr Baker said he was concerned about the welfare of rural communities amid unfounded speculation the current drought might continue for decades.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21405796-5009760,00.html#

S. Hales

#58
Jerryb,

This is all rather absurd. Thanks for the warning. Here you have the daily files, which are updated daily, but are not the sum total of all the stations used to produce the v2 dataset. Another group of files “mysteriously” exist somewhere that make up part of the v2 dataset. Do you have any idea where this other data (daily I presume) might reside other than in its v2 incarnation?

JerryB

From the paper announcing the release of GHCN V2 in 1997:

“In the digital archives, there are many more station years of monthly
data available than daily data with correspondingly much better spatial
coverage.”

Follow the Money

Aileni, #52:

“”I have just read that New Scientist was inclined to ignore’ C4’s Swindle’.
I am having difficulty getting my head around this. Are they going crazy, is this Post Normal Science?””

Very funny!

Correct, “post normal science” is not a “craziness.” More an ego defense mechanism shared (or to be shared) among the scientific community for whom selling out for money or conformity clashes with real science i.e, “skepticism”. Hijinx/reaction formation ensues…

Howastz Szat

Interesting read in Science daily : Researchers Question Validity Of A ‘Global Temperature’

David Smith

Re #71 I’m eagerly awaiting the European hurricane forecast for 2007, which is reputed to be considerably more accurate than the NOAA and other forecasts.

Apparently the Europeans run GCM(s) for extended periods (six or eight months) and count the number/strength of storms the GCM(s) generate in that period. That is different from the pattern/analogue methodology of other forecasters, like NOAA, Gray, Lloyd’s, etc.

With luck, the new European forecast will be made public before the 2007 season ends.

L Nettles

re 71 Here’s Mr. Rouiller in August of 2006

Depression Likely to Become Hurricane Next Week -Planalytics
Date: Saturday, August 26 @ 13:22:27 EDT
Topic: Enviromental Headlines; Climate Change

The fifth tropical depression of the 2006 Atlantic storm season likely will become a hurricane as it moves into the U.S. Gulf of Mexico early next week, a private weather forecaster said Friday. “A strong consensus from hurricane tracking models indicate this storm will become a hurricane as it moves into the Gulf early next week and could threaten the Gulf production and rig infrastructure during the later half of next week,” Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics, said in a note.

Ernesto didn’t become a Hurricane and didn’t get to the Gulf

Russ

Re:#77

Will five years of really cold weather save us, or will it be too late? Should we pray for a Daulton Minimum, 25 years of very cold dry weather?

John A

Will five years of really cold weather save us, or will it be too late? Should we pray for a Daulton Minimum, 25 years of very cold dry weather?

Be careful what you wish for. I’d rather climate modellers had five more years of smugness than a Dalton-minimum style cool down, which would kill hundreds of thousands in cold and drought.

David Smith

The forecast is for weak La Nina (cool) conditions by this summer, along with a cooling Atlantic. See slide 28 of the latest outlook . The SST forecasts are the small maps on the left, each covering a three-month span. By hurricane season the tropical SST are near-normal.

The subsurface equatorial Pacific also continues to cool, even at the deeper depths. 2007 is shaping up as an interesting year, temperature-wise.

Pat Frank

#59 — Zinc ores often contain a significant lead component. According to this Tennessee government environmental report (pdf linked), the Caney Fork mines zinc ore is apparently one such. I wonder what they’re doing with the lead.

TAC

WRT #83, Emanuel summarizes his criticism of Michaels et al. (aka “MKD”):

MKD’s central hypothesis is refuted: Lack of correlation of high intensity events with SST (or potential intensity) in a particular climate does not imply that temporally increasing potential intensity (SST) will have no significant effect on tropical cyclone activity; indeed observed time trends in tropical cyclone energy are highly significant and strongly correlated with SST, as observations clearly show. Nor is there any indication that the maximum wind speed achievable in hurricanes levels off at high sea surface temperature; both theories and models show a smooth, continuous increase. MKD’s conclusion that tropical cyclone intensity depends on SST only in a certain range of the latter is likewise false, arising from a confusion between spatial gradients of potential intensity, that depend mostly on the very large increase of outflow temperature from the tropics to the subtropics, with variability within the tropics, where the outflow temperature is less variable.

In response, MKD conclude:

We thank Emanuel [2007] for analyses that provide further detail about the complex relationship between SST and tropical cyclone intensity in the Atlantic basin. In agreement with Michaels et al. [2006], Emanuel’s modelbased findings confirm the lack of a strong, statistically significant SST signal in the average intensity of tropical cyclones encountering high SST (i.e., above the 28.25
C threshold). There is, however, some indication that higher SST may lead to more intense strong storms. Currently, Figure 1. Scatterplot of maximum wind speed and the highest SST encountered prior to (or concurrent with) reaching the maximum wind speed for all Atlantic basin major (category 3, 4, 5) hurricanes. The two storms in the lower left (open circles) did not encounter the 28.25
C threshold (vertical line) that is typically a prerequisite for major hurricane development. 2 of 3 observations can neither confirm nor refute that relationship. We do not contend that increasing SST has not, or will not, influence the intensity or frequency of Atlantic tropical cyclones. We have demonstrated in our initial findings [Michaels et al., 2006], and Emanuel has furthered in his comments, that a modest impact is likely. However, the overall weakness in the relationship between SST and storm intensity indicates that SST is only one of myriad determinants of tropical cyclone strength. This complicates clear attribution of observed or future changes. These results reaffirm our original conclusions that the full reason for the observed changes in tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic has yet to be established, and that we therefore recommend a cautious approach to assigning an underlying cause in this complex system [Michaels et al., 2006].”

My sense is that Emanuel has raised a couple of interesting points. I will leave it to others to characterize their relevance to the findings of the original MKD paper.

Steve McIntyre

I’m getting a little puzzled about Al Gore’s carbon offset purchases and his arrangements with the company. As I understand it, he did not actually purchase carbon offsets himself, but Generation Investment Management purchased carbon offsets for him as a member of senior management as part of their executive compensation package. If this was executive compensation, then should Generation Investment Management issue Al Gore what in Canada would be a T-4 slip and pay deductions to the federal government? It’s a curious arrangement when you think about it: the more profligate Al is with his energy consumption, the more carbon offsets are supposedly purchased by Gen Inv and thus the higher his personal income (assuming that the purchases on his behalf are income to him).

In an unrelated news story, the Toronto papers are full of the Conrad Black trial in Chicago. Conrad Black, a famous Canadian, was the controlling shareholder of several public companies and is charged with using company funds as though they were personal purposes.

David Smith

Re #86

I’ve read both letters, and they actually left me feeling sad for Emanuel.

I’d be glad to comment in detail, but I think there are limits to what can be publically extracted from for-fee papers.

Ken Fritsch

I belive I can look at the effects of putting more acreage into corn and soybeans after price increases as I have that information going back to 1961 and further for IL. There is a major debate going on amongst farmers currently about planting significantly more corn on acreage that would have been used for soybeans if the corn prices had not sky rocketed from the demand placed on it for added alcohol production.

Roger Dueck

jar #49

“Both John and Teresa have been long-time leaders in the battle to save the Earth’s environment,” Gore stated. “Way back when it was not all fashionable, indeed when very few people in the world were even paying attention to it, both John and Teresa were providing outstanding and courageous leadership.”

LOL
This from Al Gore. When was it not fashonable? Does he mean it now IS fashonable? Pol-i-tics!

David Smith

RE #93 Will do, Ken, by the weekend. TAC does a good job of capturing one of the main oddities. There are others. It’s a strange exchange.

bernie

#91, #92
Ken:
Excellent. Great work. I guess the metapoint is that Lobell and Field would have helped us all out if they had specified their regression equation. The product or interaction term is clearly significant based upon your work. I can’t believe they did not use one in their model – which makes me wonder. I am still interested in what happens when you add price to your model – plus the theory of the weather that farmers carry around in their heads, e.g., dry seasons come in twos or threes, cool wet seasons are followed by hot wet – stuff like that which can influence theor behavior. Irrigation also seems to play a very significant role in adjusting yields, so that certainly should be a variable in the equation – the more so if you found an effect for hot-dry.
As an aside, can you check the correlation between tmin and tmax? You may also want to limit the correlation with the product term by creating dummy variables for cool-wet, avg-avg, cool-dry, etc. But I am at the limits of my technical knowledge so perhaps someone else can help specify the equations that would minimize spurious correlations.

MarkW

The futures market does play a big role, but the futures are an average for the whole country, perhaps the whole world since
it is a world market.

Each farmer would adjust the data from the futures market with his own feelings for what is likely to happen in his particular
corner of the world. Many things affect that. From farmers almanac type historical data, like bernie mentioned, to guesses how
the current nino/nina is going to affect rain patterns.

All in all, this is a tough nut to crack.

Ralph Baskett

Re: 98, 99
In my experience, I have never heard a farmer cite long-term weather forecasts as a factor in determining what crop to plant or how many acres to plant. I think this is because weather forecasts are usually wrong.
In irrigated areas, high temperature and drought may not result in lower yields and can easily result in higher yields. The optimum conditions for cotton are 90-degree highs, low humidity and no rain! More marginal acres (i.e., less productive) are planted when the price is high which will almost certainly result in a lower average yield.
Bernie, I attempted to answer your earlier question concerning how prices affect acres planted in comment 60.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #77 – We completely scooped the main stream media. We got the story out several hours before they did.

UC

Does anyone have a copy of

Osborn TJ, Briffa KR, Jones PD (1997) Adjusting variance for sample-size in tree-ring chronologies and other regional-mean time-series. Dendrochronologia 15:89’€”99

?

bernie

#102
Ralph:
Many thanks for your earlier response at #60. I took from your earlier response that there is a complex interplay around pricing that involves near and non-complementary commodities. I agree. Moreover, I think it is OK if the model builders decide for simplicity sake to ignore certain classes of variables and effects. However, they then should provide a reasoned argument as to why these other variables can be ignored or they should avoid drawing significant conclusions for what are clearly partial models. The interesting thing for me, is that the Lobell and Field study is a microcosm of what seems to have happened with GCMs – too much ready, fire, aim.

JerryB

Re #105,

fFreddy

They are “wolf” sunspot numbers for calendar years 1804,
and 1816, respectively. In between, 1810 had zero, and
was the most recent calendar year to do so.

cbone

Shadow post from a submission I made to RC 2 hours ago. I guess it won’t make it through screening…

Are there any assessments of the snowpack for the first half of the century? It seems rather ‘convenient’ to pick as your starting date for the assessment a point which coincides with the beginning of the mid-century cooling period associated with the 50’s-70’s. Wouldn’t a more accurate assesment be to compare today’s snowpack to that of the 20’s and 30’s during the peak of the early century warming?

Ken Fritsch

To provide background for my IL crop yield analysis, I have provided below my sources for climate data (max/min temperatures and precipitation amounts and for yield data for corn and soybeans in IL.

ISWS Climate Data for IL climate at specified IL locations:

http://www.sws.uiuc.edu/data/climatedb

NASS IL Report for IL crop statistics including yields, acres planted and grain prices:

http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Illinois/index.asp

For temperatures I used the average monthly values for the areas of Decatur, Dixon, Peoria and Jerseyville. A small amount of climate data was missing (always from only a single location) and that location was excluded from the 3 location average for that time period. The climate data were condensed into the table below for the months of July and August along with the IL annual soybean and corn yields (SoyBY and CornY) and the percentage deviations in these yields from the trend line are listed under CornTY and SoyBTY. Max and Min data are the averages of the July and August monthly averages of the daily high and low temperatures. Prec refers to precipitation in inches. Prod is the product of the maximum temperature (in degrees F) – 95 with this quantity multiplied times the precipitation or Prod = (95-Max) x Prec.

If one scans the lowest values of Prod and looks at yields one can see a rapid fall off in yields from trend when its value drops into the low 30s and below. One can also note from viewing the table that dry periods are often accompanied with higher temperatures. I plan to show a couple of graphs with my next post and make some additional comments.

The table set-up in the review looks like a great improvement for this board in handling tabled data– now lets see if it makes it through to the finished post.

Year Max Min Prec SoyBY CornY Prod CornTY SoyBTY
1961 85.0 62.6 5.0 28.5 79 50.6 -1.45% 3.88%
1962 85.4 61.4 4.2 28.5 85 40.8 3.89% 2.36%
1963 85.5 62.2 4.1 29.5 87 39.5 4.24% 4.42%
1964 86.8 62.9 2.6 25 80 21.1 -6.01% -12.77%
1965 84.3 62.2 6.1 29.5 94 65.5 8.34% 1.49%
1966 87.5 63.1 1.9 27 82 14.7 -7.25% -8.40%
1967 82.1 59.1 3.7 31 104 47.6 15.47% 3.74%
1968 85.0 63.7 3.2 31.5 90 32.3 -1.87% 3.99%
1969 86.2 64.4 3.9 34 102 34.7 9.25% 10.76%
1970 85.8 63.6 3.3 31 74 30.7 -22.12% -0.34%
1971 84.2 60.3 3.5 33 106 37.4 9.66% 4.72%
1972 84.6 63.2 4.4 34.5 110 45.9 11.89% 8.08%
1973 86.4 64.7 3.6 31.5 103 30.7 3.04% -2.57%
1974 86.4 63.5 3.0 24.5 82 25.8 -19.30% -25.16%
1975 85.9 63.6 4.2 36 116 38.5 12.34% 8.61%
1976 85.9 60.8 2.6 33 107 23.3 1.99% -1.65%
1977 85.6 63.0 5.5 38 105 51.7 -1.46% 11.89%
1978 84.9 62.6 3.5 33.5 111 35.2 2.58% -2.53%
1979 83.7 61.7 4.6 39 127 52.7 15.60% 12.15%
1980 89.3 65.5 3.6 33.5 93 20.7 -16.60% -4.79%
1981 83.2 62.9 6.7 38 126 78.5 11.35% 6.77%
1982 83.9 62.1 4.7 38.5 131 52.4 14.10% 6.95%
1983 92.3 66.4 2.0 29.5 79 5.5 -32.16% -18.97%
1984 87.0 60.7 2.0 31.5 114 15.8 -3.48% -14.44%
1985 83.1 60.6 4.6 42.5 135 54.6 12.73% 14.18%
1986 84.1 62.3 4.2 40 135 46.2 11.20% 6.30%
1987 86.4 65.0 4.7 38 132 40.3 7.27% -0.10%
1988 90.4 65.1 1.8 27 73 8.1 -41.46% -29.77%
1989 84.7 63.3 3.1 40 123 32.1 -2.65% 2.95%
1990 82.8 63.4 4.3 39 127 53.0 -0.78% -0.67%
1991 85.9 63.5 2.3 37.5 107 20.6 -17.47% -5.47%
1992 80.7 60.2 5.2 43 149 75.2 13.48% 7.29%
1993 84.5 66.5 6.1 43 130 64.3 -2.22% 6.21%
1994 83.3 61.4 3.2 45.5 156 37.7 15.90% 11.27%
1995 88.0 67.1 3.0 39 113 20.8 -17.07% -5.57%
1996 82.6 61.5 3.6 40.5 136 44.2 -1.38% -2.90%
1997 82.5 61.7 2.9 43 129 36.4 -7.56% 2.10%
1998 84.5 66.0 3.4 44 141 35.4 -0.14% 3.47%
1999 85.2 64.7 2.9 42 140 28.7 -2.00% -2.17%
2000 83.8 65.0 4.0 44 151 44.9 4.50% 1.52%
2001 86.3 65.0 3.7 45 152 32.5 4.00% 2.86%
2002 87.2 67.0 3.0 43 135 23.6 -8.66% -2.62%
2003 86.1 64.9 3.4 37 164 29.9 9.74% -16.97%
2004 80.7 60.7 4.6 50 180 66.5 19.13% 11.18%
2005 87.0 65.3 3.1 46.5 143 24.5 -6.38% 2.47%
2006 86.2 66.2 4.5 48 163 39.2 5.57% 4.83%

JerryB

re #111,

Basil,

To your question: trends yes, uniform trends no, and rising
CO2 need not account for “noise”, but something must, for
example El Nino/La Nina, cycles. If something doesn’t,
try aerosols, or ad hoc adjustments. 🙂

jae

72: From the article you linked:

Example 2: Take the same two glasses of water at 0 degrees and 100 degrees, respectively. Now multiply those two numbers and take the square root, and you will arrive at an average temperature of 46 degrees. This is called the geometric average. (The calculation is done in degrees Kelvin which are then converted back to degrees Celsius.)

Huh??

Bill F

Re: 101,

The current predictions for Cycle 24 are in unusually bad agreement regarding the height of the max. The numbers I have seen range from around 42 to 169. (http://members.chello.be/j.janssens/SC24.html)

An interesting thing to me is that Theo Landschiedt predicted a grand minima similar to the Maunder Minima to occur around 2025. NASA recently gave some hint that he may be right with a press release announcing that the conveyor belt that carries sunspots from the equator to the poles on the sun appears to have slowed way down. (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm) Since the strength of that circulation is one of the things that is used with some success to predict sunspot numbers 2 cycles from now, they are beginning to suspect that Cycle 25 may have very few sunspots. It will certainly answer the AGW question once and for all if it happens, but Lord help us if it does…

Basil Copeland

JerryB #116 you wrote: “trends yes, uniform trends no…”

In case I’m not following you, all reconstructions of global temperature I’m aware of seem premised on the notion of “uniform” trends, at least over periods of years (decades). For example, IPCC AR4 refers to a 100 year (1906-2005) “trend” of 0.74C, and for the last 50 years a “trend” of 0.13C per decade. To me, these are “uniform” trends. They completely ignore, or abstract, not just from “noise,” but from data patterns that are neither “trends” nor “noise” — like shifts or step functions. (If you know econometrics, imagine a Chow test, for example.)

But suppose all the “trend” in the last two decades is not really a trend, but a sudden upward shift of 0.26C (instead of a “trend” of 0.13C for two decades). Could this be attributed to a gradual rise in CO2, or is it more likely that such a structural shift is the result of something else, like PDO/ENSO? Is anyone saying PDO/ENSO events are caused by rising CO2 causing rising temperatures causing PDO/ENSO events? Isn’t that rather reversing what we know about causation?

Steve Sadlov

RE: #120 – We are way overdue for another period similar to ~ 450 – ~ 700 AD. The closest thing to it, since then, was the LIA, but that was pretty wimpy in terms of overall impact. See, the AGW alarmists don’t own the monopoly on pessimistic outlooks! 🙂

Steve B

One of the Swindle programme’s claims was that volcanoes produced a lot more CO2 than man, which various people have been shooting down by reference to a paper by TM Gerlach, EOS Trans. AGU (which seems to be more of a newsletter than a technical journal). I wanted to see how it was calculated and what estimated errors were reported. I’ve searched the AGU archive and can’t find it, but in the process of looking found another paper by RE Stoiber that quotes CO2 emission figures (Table 1) of 65 GtCO2/yr for subaerial volcanoes (i.e. not including submarine volcanoes) commenting that this stuff is hard to measure and numbers are approximate.

Click to access 21_stoiber.pdf

As I understand the anthropogenic emissions are estimated at 5.5GtC/yr = 20 GtCO2/yr, which is indeed smaller, I don’t understand the figure they’re quoting from Gerlach. I also find it particularly annoying that they quote without giving details a paper I can’t read, as “proof” that the claim in Swindle is wrong.

Have I done something stupid? Does anyone know if I can get this Gerlach paper for free anywhere? Does anyone have any word on the official up-to-date figures or other sources for volcanic CO2? (The AGU seems to have any number of papers, which I plan to read further, but it would save me time if someone already knows the answer.) Who is right in this case – Swindle or the Climatologists?

I thought this might be the best place to ask such a question. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.

David Smith

Re #126 A webpage by the US Geological Survey ( here ) says manmade CO2 emission rates are much higher than those of volcanoes, and gives some values from Gerlach. I imagine that is correct.

It refers to the Gerlach paper. I’ll search for a copy. Should be interesting reading.

John Lang

To Steve B #126 – I’ve seen numbers that place emissions from volcanoes at 0.15 billion tonnes (carbon). Now those are averages – every now and again a really big volcanoe like Krakatoa happens and that would dwarf the human emissions but those really big eruptions do not happen that often.

The paper you linked to is taking about subaerial (undersea) volcanoes and there are clearly way more volcanoes under the ocean than on land (especially including the mid-oceanic ridges.)

However, do those CO2 emissions make it to the atmosphere? They do, but through the emissions from the oceans.

The numbers on emissions for the oceans is 92 billion tonnes (Carbon) going in – and 90 billion tonnes going out. So the subaerial volcanoe emissions have to be tied into these numbers.

I still have not seen any studies which show how much the 92 billion tonne number varies with ocean temperature which it clearly does. Think in terms of a 5C colder ocean in the ice ages which clearly absorbed alot of CO2.

Steve B

David Smith,

Thanks, you’re right. I’ve got the units mixed up. I’d converted Tg to Gt wrongly.

I’d still be interested in anything anyone has on how they work it out, though. You can’t just multiply the number of volcanoes by the amount of gas each one generates, because they’re all different, and irregular. It sounds like an interesting calculation.

David Smith

There’s a nice image of a double ITCZ in the eastern Pacific today (March 21). The animation shows two lines of clouds and showers on either side of the equator.

link

Reference

CSPAN webcast of House Energy Subcmte hearing on Global Climate Change starring Al Gore – starting 9:30 ET today

Michael Jankowski

RE#28:

The main problem that I have with the “aerosols like SO2 caused the 1945-1975 cooling” theory…

To add to that…if the aerosols were more persistent in the atmosphere than you and I think they are, exactly why didn’t the aerosol cooling and GHG warming go hand-in-hand and result in a flatline? It seems anthropogenic emissions of aerosols and GHGs should have pretty much matched each others trends, not alternated with GHG warming dominating pre-1945 and then aerosol cooling dominating from 1945-1975.

Basil Copeland

#135 Jerry, that helps me understand your distinction. Given it, it still seems to me that temperature changes are routinely represented as if they were vectors (to use your term), e.g. 0.13C decadal change in the last 50 years. But statistically, this isn’t so. The “vector” is more like 0.04C per decade, with a big jump of about 0.2C after 1997. So how does rising CO2 account for the jump, as opposed, say, to the trend/vector? To put it more succintly, CO2 rise has been gradual; temperature change has not. So what is the physical theory that links gradual CO2 rise to sudden shifts of temperature regime? That’s what I’m really asking about.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #123

“Although separating the effects of these two stresses is difficult, most temperature stress conditions occur on high atmospheric-moisture-demand days’€”i.e., days when the daily mean temperature is above 77 F and the daily maximum is above 95 F, regardless of soil moisture conditions.”

Barry B., thanks much for that information — and now this retired guy seeking an excuse to get back to retirement mode has been given something else to analyze. I think I have the information (daily max/min temperatures) to look at the point raised by your reference and will do so along with some other unfinished items I wanted to cover.

I am assuming that the pollination process is most susceptible to temperatures and moisture and I wanted to zero-in at that approximate time period for a correlation with yield changes from the trend line. Remember that although Lobell stated that the months used for the correlation of temperature and moisture with yield were not highly sensitive to the degree of correlation (without indicating which or how many months that was), I found that the April through August correlation was very close to zero for IL in the 1961 to 2006 time period for soybeans and corn. Lobell did say that the July/August was selected because it gave the highest correlation. Lobell’s using a wider range area for his study and thus a more varied climate conditions and growing seasons in his study may have resulted in his looking at a critical growth period for the crops that was smeared into a wider seasonal range. I am wondering whether corn and/or soybeans that I know grow in higher temperature areas such as Brazil and Florida are breed to perform better in climates with higher temperatures and percipitation.

I also am looking at cyclical nature of the periods of high temperature and low moisture going back to 1901 with the IL temperature data.

JerryB

Re #140,

Basil,

My impression is that the AGWers would say something like:
while things like ENSO, and PDO, cause sudden shifts, the
shifts will have higher highs, and/or higher lows, as time
passes, due to increased CO2.

Bill F

More evidence of a solar link to climate:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319

Shouldn’t somebody tell these guys at NASA that the science is already settled?

Michael Jankowski

Re#144,
Don’t forget that AGW causes (or will cause) more frequent shifts to “bad” and longer durations of “bad.”

Lee

find the major volcanic eruptions…

Gerald Machnee

Re #126 and #150 – **One of the Swindle programme’s claims was that volcanoes produced a lot more CO2 than man**.
There is a wording that one has to check. This is not definite as I am still reading and searching. Is it “produced more in total” or is it “contributed more” to the annual increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Also one author indicated (do not recall which one) that the historical total from volcanoes may be higher than man’s contribution. Again is it to the increase or what is in the atmosphere? Stevenson (noted in the thread on Buckets, I think)had some figures as well as Tom V. Segalstad on the contribution of volcanoes as well as anthropogenic CO2. Segalstad in http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm also cites a COUPLE DOZEN authors whose research indicates CO2 residence time in the atmosphere of about 5 years as opposed to the 50 to 200 years that the IPCC is preaching.
With respect to the chart in #150 – there is checking to be done there as well. Segalstad indicated that the Mauna Loa measurements are done by IR as opposed to chemical measurements done before that. We do not know what assumptions they made. They were using monthly and seasonal averaging so that would not always show large variations. Mauna Loa was selected to be away from INDUSTRIAL CO2, but is it away from volcanic sources?
So, we need a chemical audit as I am not drawing any conclusions on its accuracy.

Bishop Hill

Svensmark and Nigel Calder were interviewed on BBC Radio 5 this afternoon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive_aod.shtml?fivelive/mayo_wed

The interview starts at 1hr 55min.

Lee

Gerald, the ~ 8ppm annual cycle in that record is due to seasonal changes in terrestrial vegetation – the measurements (averaged MONTHLY, not seasonally) clearly show that mixing of the atmosphere is sufficient and rapid enough to catch those monthly changes in mid-Pacific. In fact, the month-to-month variation that they resolve is significantly less than 1 ppm. In other words, they not only routinely, but ALWAYS resolve monthly variations in mixed CO2 concentrations due to global seasonal vegetation changes, and they do it to less than 1ppm.

There is no evidence of local perturbations in that record, such as from emissions from local volcanoes. Mauna Loa is not continuously erupting, and if it has emissions that would perturb the record, one would see it in jumps coinciding with onset of eruptions and quiescent periods. There is no hint of such variations in this record. Remember that the Mauna Loa observatory is measuring predominantly tradewind-delivered mixed atmosphere, which is some 2500 miles or more downwind of urban/industrial areas.

That record also does not show any perturbations coincident with known major volcanic eruptions. That is, volcanic eruptions during that time period do not make a measurable change in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, while the overall concentration has climbed smoothly from 315 to 375. The cause of that increases is clearly continuous, not episodic.

Saying that you don’t believe the record because you don’t know the ‘assumptions’ behind IR-absorption measurements of CO2, while looking at a record that reliably resolves monthly variations of less than 1ppm, is simply blind dismissal.

Steve B

Lee, what point are you trying to make? I’m reasonably happy that CO2 emissions from volcanoes are less than the anthropogenic ones, (now that I’ve remembered that the SI units of mass are different from the base unit :-),) but its exactly this sort of nonsensical non-proof that annoyed me enough to go looking for more information. What does the lack of spikes in the graph prove? That the variable component in tectonic emissions doesn’t dominate the change in CO2. But that doesn’t say whether there is a large constant background component, it can only be interpreted in light of the smoothing that atmospheric mixing applies, if tectonic contributions had been of the same order of magnitude as anthropogenic (like one percent per year) then it wouldn’t introduce visible spikes either, and if both effects were dominated by changes in some other source, like biosphere or ocean, but with a heavily damped response due to unknown negative feedbacks, then changes in both anthropogenic and volcanic contributions wouldn’t show up against it. I’m not saying that’s the case, and I don’t think it is the case, but I’d like to know how we know.

The Swindle programme got something wrong – fair enough. Most TV documentaries do. But in trying to answer the point the arguers only cited the lack of spikes in the CO2 rise, which as I said doesn’t mean anything of the sort, and quoted this Gerlach paper giving the accepted results. But I like ‘argument from authority’ even less than ‘argument from spurious graph’, so quoting a paper I can’t access doesn’t satisfy me any more than the graph does. I want to know how you know. It also sounds like a very interesting bit of science – how on Earth do you estimate the total CO2 emitted from all the world’s volcanoes?

You could sample the gas mixture from a volcano at a particular point in time, but I expect it varies. Different types of volcano give different mixes, and while we probably know where all the world’s volcanoes are, to characterise the emissions of all of them sounds like a big job. And how do you measure the total volume of gas given off over a wide area where it’s too dangerous to get near? You could measure it downwind and guess how much mixing had gone on, but that sounds very inaccurate. Or is it something clever like the carbon content of the lava? And what about CO2 coming up through faults and cracks in areas where the geology isn’t obviously active? And how about underwater?

So, how did they do it, and how accurate is it? Has nobody made any better estimates since 1991? The Swindle programme had its faults, but one thing it showed quite well was that, even if the AGWers are right, the arguments they have presented so far to the general public don’t prove it, and are missing a lot of relevant detail.

Sorry if that comes across a little bad tempered. I guess it doesn’t matter very much. I was just hoping that since it had apparently been a matter of contention in this debate, someone here might have already looked at it. Tracking it down will give me something to do. 🙂

Bill F

Re 151:

See 120. NCAR’s prediction is at the high end of the spread of predictions that range from 42 to 169. Pay attention to the fact that the press release you linked to is from march of last year, not this year. The article about the slowing of the conveyor belt was referring to Cycle 25, not 24, so don’t get confused between the two predictions.

Re 157: See 146.

Lee

sorry – my 159 response was to “SteveB.” Apologies for not including the post number or complete handle.

Pete

Is Joan Feynman related to the Feynman

Joan is Richard’s sister.

richardT

#163

If the ice core record is substantially correct it would beg the questions of why there is no carbon dioxide rise preceding temperature rise

Why should it? Terminations of the glacials were initiated by orbital forcings. Nobody, except for you, expects a CO2 forcing to precede the orbital forcing. How could it?

why there is no feedback

There was. Orbital forcing and albedo changes (one feedback no-one ever seems to have any problem with) are insufficient to explain the glacial-interglacial temperature difference. The CO2 feedback can account for the missing forcing.

and why an “unprecedented” carbon dioxide rise has not produced “unprecedented” temperature rise.

Just wait! There are substantial lags in the climate system to forcings, especially in warming the oceans and vegetation feedbacks.

Richard Sharpe

richardT says:

Just wait! There are substantial lags in the climate system to forcings, especially in warming the oceans and vegetation feedbacks.

Do we have to wait 800 years though? Indeed, how long do you suggest we wait?

Mark T.

I’ve looked at IPCC 4AR about the CO2 lead-lag issue and it has virtually nothing on the topic, other than to say that temperature changes lead CO2 and the feedback isn’t understood.

It’s not understood because they can’t get a handle on causality. Feedback cannot create cause to lag effect unless it is a non-causal (or acausal) system. Nature is not non-causal.

Mark

TAC

#171, as I understand it, the MWP was caused by the Industrial Revolution, and the LIA will be caused by Peak Oil.

Gerald Machnee

Re #150 and #156 **Saying that you don’t believe the record because you don’t know the assumptions’ behind IR-absorption measurements of CO2, while looking at a record that reliably resolves monthly variations of less than 1ppm, is simply blind dismissal.**
My exact words were — “I am not drawing any conclusions on its accuracy.”
Lee, I stand by my comments – we do not know what they are doing in terms of averaging. I did not outright say, they filter out eruptions – I meant we do not know. As Steve M indicated, there is no point in discussing too much. I do not think any of us here today have been involved in the measurement. I mentioned Stevenson and Segalstad and nobody had referred to them. Segalstad noted that a couple of dozen or so researchers determined that the CO2 residence time in the atmosphere is about 5 years, something which the IPCC has ignored, expanding it by 10 times to 50 to 200 years and now all the AGW crowd quotes it without knowing why. Also, one of the original scientists who started the Mauna Loa site agreed that most of the increase was of natural origin. So unless anyone can get into the real documentation there is not much point in “he said, she said”.

DeWitt Payne

Raymo, M.E. & Ruddiman, W.F., “Tectonic forcing of late Cenozoic climate” Nature, 359, 117-122 (1992) show a long term proxy record of oxygen isotope ratios in benthic foraminifera. The references for the figure are: Miller, K.G., Faiarbanks, R.G. & Mountain, G.S. ,Paleoceanography, 2 , 1-19 (1987) and Shackleton, H.J. & Kennett, J.P.,Init. Rep. Deep Sea Drilling Proj., 29 (ed. Kennett, J.P.) 801-807 (U.S.Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1975). The figure in Raymo and Ruddiman shows a fairly rapid increase in delta 18O in the last few million years and a general overall slower increase in the last 70 million years. The authors propose that the uplift of the Tibetan plateau, starting about 50 Myr ago when the Indo-Australian plate collided with the Asian plate, has caused a decrease in atmospheric CO2 due to an increase in chemical weathering. They also propose that this has not resulted in complete stripping of CO2 from the atmosphere because there was, among other things, a counterbalancing increase in CO2 production from increased oxidation of buried organic carbon. This would tend to alter the 12C/13C ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere because buried organic carbon is enriched in 12C. Perhaps the proposed mechanisms have been debunked in the last 15 years, but the proxy record seems to show that current temperatures (and by implication CO2 levels) are unusually low and ice volumes unusually high compared to the average of the last 70 Myr. It would be interesting to see how current oxygen isotope ratios compare to those in Raymo and Ruddiman.

Willis Eschenbach

Gerald, I fear that you are conflating residence time and e-folding (or half-life) time when you say:

I mentioned Stevenson and Segalstad and nobody had referred to them. Segalstad noted that a couple of dozen or so researchers determined that the CO2 residence time in the atmosphere is about 5 years, something which the IPCC has ignored, expanding it by 10 times to 50 to 200 years and now all the AGW crowd quotes it without knowing why.

Residence time is the amount of time the average CO2 molecule stays in the air. It can be measured several ways, all of which come up with something around 5 years. E-folding or half-life time, on the other hand, is much more difficult to measure. It is how long it takes for a “pulse” of CO2 which has been emitted into the atmosphere to to decay to 1/e (or 1/2, in the case of a half-life value) of the initial size of the pulse.

While the IPCC estimates the e-folding time at 50-200 years, there are good reasons to say it is shorter, on the order of 30 to 50 years.

My best to everyone,

w.

MarkW

As a corollary, I was also thinking about what would be happening at the surface of the seas as water levels dropped.

If the earth were just a ball covered by water, dropping sea levels would have very little impact on air pressure at sea level.
There would be a small increase because dropping sea levels means that the radius of the earth has dropped a little. Thus there is
less total surface area, which means that the atmosphere has to pile up a tiny bit higher to squeeze itself into a smaller globe.

Now we don’t live on a water world. (though with the oceans covering 70% of the world, we’re not that far off.)
The 30% of the world that is not covered by water obviously won’t drop in elevation as the waters shrink. There’s also the affect of
ice forming on the land which will displace air. (Actually ice will displace a little more air than the water formerly did, since water
expands as it freezes.) The net result is that the atmosphere gets thicker above the oceans. Which increases air pressure and causes
the air at the new sea level to be warmer than it would have been had the atmosphere stayed constant.
This would slow down ice formation at the new sea level, but it would also increase evaporation, which would increase the moisture available
for precipitation. Both as rain, and as snow.

Gerald Machnee

Re #178 – Thanks Willis. I do not have a full understanding of the topic, but my readings indicated that IPCC numbers were too large and not explained. So I also suggested that unless someone has the appropriate figures, back and forth chatter will not advance the topic.

David Smith

And now for something entirely different … a look at current ocean temperatures.

First, the equatorial Pacific, which is the nursery of the famous El Nino and La Nina. The surface temperature is given here . Double-click on the colored map to get a blowup of March 21 surface temperatures alone the Pacific equator and check the lower map, which shows temperature anomaly.

What is shows is what I’d call neutral conditions, with some cool and some warm. Winds are still wishy-washy, though, so a definite direction (cooler or warmer) does not appear to be set yet. However, the SOI index, which tends to forecast winds, is entering a “cooling” region, and many of the models forecast cooling.

(One curiosity on the chart is the region of coolness that suddenly appeared (this week) at about 170E. This is like a bubbling-up of cool water. What’s odd is that this coolness is not visible on the charts of deeper-ocean temperatures. Odd.)

Speaking of deeper ocean temperatures, a cross-section of equatorial Pacific ocean temperatures is given here . Note the darker green and bluish shades on the bottom plot – those are anomalously cool water. Much of the subsurface equatorial Pacific is cooler than normal, which provides support to a La Nina and moderation of Warm Pool temperatures (left side of chart).

A map of global temperature anomalies 150 meters below the surface is shown here , bottom chart. There is a battle between cool and warm underway beneath the Indian Ocean surface, which illustrates (to me) the dynamic nature of currents and upwelling in that region. I continue to wonder if there are periods when one mode (cool or warm) dominates, which affects global climate. Perhaps the strength of Antarctic circumpolar winds, which affect the amount of thermohaline upwelling near Antarctica, also affect the Indian upwelling. Conjecture.

Also of note is the tropical Atlantic, where there is little subsurface support for anomalously warm sea surface temperatures as we approach the hurricane season.

Finally, the current global surface temperature anomaly is shown here . Yellows are warm, blues are cool. The Atlantic is warm, but not stongly so, except for the regions near and north of Europe. The Warm Pool (tropical Africa eastward to 180W, more or less) continues to cool. The Southern Hemisphere oceans remain rather anomalously cool.

Ken Fritsch

Re #177

Here are some additional analyses that I did relative to the Lobell paper on temperature effects on crop yields. The analyses may raise more questions perhaps than they answer, although my conclusions indicate to me, anyway, that Lobell’s analysis is correct vis-à -vis soybean and corn for IL, but that the relationship of temperature to crop yield is much more complex than Lobell’s paper would indicate.

I followed up on the suggestion that, at least, corn has a maximum temperature of 95 degrees F where yields would fall off due to stress under any moisture conditions. The best I could do data-wise was find days for July/August that exceeded 90 degrees F. Although these data gave a somewhat better correlation with corn yields (deviation from trend line) than Max temperature it remained confounded with moisture as is Max temperature.

Max temperature and days over 90 degrees has an R^2 correlation of 0.87 and days over 90 and Max temperatures correlate with moisture with R^2 in both cases of 0.30.

What I did discover, that was somewhat surprising, was the temperature calculations I made in attempts to estimate the crop growing climate conditions for the IL grain belt back to 1901 was the following for 1901 to 2006 temperature trends:

The Max July/Aug temperature trended downward by 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) per century.

The average of the Max/Min July/Aug temperature trended downward by 0.8 degrees F (0.44 degrees C) per century.

The average Min/Max for all 12 months temperatures trended upward by 0.6 degrees F (0.33 degrees C) per century.

I need to look further to determine whether these relationships hold up for the grid cell temperatures from the official data bases ‘€” but I intend to do it at the leisurely pace of the retired guy.

I have included 2 graphs below that show the cyclical nature of climate favorable to corn and soybean yields. I suspect, from this information alone, or any that Lobell presented in his paper, there is no valid indication that a small incremental increase in average temperature is going to be seen in the much larger cyclical fluctuations that detrimentally effect crop (or at least IL soybean and corn) yields. That the threshold temperature/moisture conditions versus yield appear to plateau into the favorable area and fall off at a steep linear rate into the more unfavorable areas should not be surprising when considering the plant physiologies. It also reminds of the relationship that Pat Michaels indicated that he found for hurricane intensities.

If I were advising Lobell and company I would recommend that they follow the crop yields in smaller areas where climate conditions do not get “averaged out” and confused. (I have noted that while temperatures tend to temporally correlate rather well across the IL grain belt, precipitation can be very localized at times). Once they found a reasonable model for crop yield versus climate conditions they could then proceed to apply it to what they measured as changing climate conditions and make estimates of losses or gains, albeit it would need to be applied on an area by area basis.

Bob Koss

Here’s an interesting anomaly I haven’t seen mentioned. Link

A MASSIVE, mysterious whirlpool of cold water has developed off the coast of Sydney, forcing the sea surface to fall almost 1m and ocean currents to change course.

Dubbed a sea “monster” by CSIRO oceanographers, the huge body of water stretches almost 200km across and plunges 1000m towards the ocean floor. Its centre sits just 100km off the coast of Sydney and could stay there for months.

bernie

Ken:
My issue with the Lobell and Field article is not that what they did was wrong – but it is great that you were able to duplicate it despite the absence of their regression equation. It is more what they did not do. You have very usefully pointed out that it is better to build the model from a specific to a general rather than jump immediately to a global data set that hides significant psssible regional variations and, most importantly, key additional variables such as soil qualities. I was intrigued by the fact that the Illinois data set included prices and acreage. Can they be factored into your model?

bernie

WSJ remains a good newspaper.

bernie

Geove:
Another interesting point. Now I count soil quality, price, drainage, irrigation, seed to climate match,…, and on and on. As noted before, the model is underspecified and, therefore, the correlations found can be entirely spurious. It is a sophisticed version of the correlation between the number of clergymen in Boston and the consumption of rum.

John Baltutis

Re: #193

With regards to the lobell paper it seems intriging to me that a pair of scientists who probably don’t know the difference between a plow and a combine can speculate on how a minor change in temperature will effect agricultural yields.

They operate under the same rubric that allows economists to speculate on economy while never running their own business, climate modelers to speculate on future climate when they can’t get their underlying weather models to predict next week’s weather accurately, or market analysts whose prognostications historically under perform the index funds, but don’t bet with their money, but sell their wares to the unwary.

Bob Koss

NCDC has an archive going back to 1929 of daily station data located here.

Kind of skimpy in the early years, but becomes quite extensive.

Actual min/max temperatures and not anomalies.

Ulises

Re # 178 : If the concept of half-life holds, i.e. a constant proportion is removed/dying/decaying/extincted per unit time interval, then what is left follows f[t] = exp(-c*t), with t for time, and c as parameter. Then you have the straightforward relationship : average_lifetime = 1/c . In the given case, 1/c = 5.

Solving exp(-0.2*t)=0.5 for t gives a half-life of ~ 3.5 years.

Of course, applying a different decrease function will result in another value, but I wouldn’t speak of half-life then.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #199

Barry B., thanks for the links and comments as they and those of others in this thread have added much to my information base. My very small scale study was simply an effort on my part to attempt to confirm or deny some of my past experiences and thoughts on the subject matter.

The major point that I derived from my spatially very restricted look at the Lobell issue was that, yes, one can find a correlation of temperature to yield, but that that correlation needs to be tempered with the recognition that temperature and moisture are both important factors when combined at more extreme values and that being the case can become confounding factors when they correlate and cannot be separated sufficiently in nature.

I do not believe that Lobell put together a model that contained all the factors that might affect yields, but simply did individual correlations and thus was able to isolate the temperature versus yield relationship and in turn relate it to the “cost” of AGW. The latter relationship was in my opinion probably the motivation for doing the analysis and not that of learning some insights into the more complex nature that climate plays on crop yields. I can also see his paper being quoted as a cost of AGW in terms of increasing global temperatures without adding the authors own caveats on carbon dioxide fertilization which would, of course, be directly correlated in the big “A” AGW theory of warming.

I also understand what you are saying about the remainder of the world’s (Northern Hemisphere I think otherwise Lobell growing seasons do not make sense) crop land conditions being different than IL. Crops that would be grown under normal climate conditions that put the prevailing moisture/temperature on the downward sloping part of the yield curve would make them more temperature sensitive over time, but would also call into question why they would be grown under those conditions and whether or not a better breed of crop would be more adaptable to these conditions. I suspect this would happen less often where crop produce were grown and sold under more free market conditions and without the artificial influences of trade restrictions and government price supports, i.e. obtaining the full benefits of Ricardo’s comparative advantages.

Some other points from Lobell that were brought into contention with my limited study are:

They restrict their published results to the months with the greatest correlation between temperature and crop yield and than condition this by stating that the sensitivity to months selected is not great. I found no correlation for IL corn and soybean when the months April through August were selected.

They do not mention that the worst conditions for crops of higher temperatures in droughts can destroy yields to a significant extent and color the results of their relationships. Also they make no mention of even the potential for reoccurring weather patterns being the major player in crop yield reductions. Would detailed discussion of those conditions redirect the emphasis from gradually changing temperatures to the more extreme changes seen in natural weather cycles? I can also see regionally extended temperature patterns not matching precipitation amounts which tend to be, in my quick look, more localized, or at least in IL. I see a need to do these studies on a size restricted area by area basis to get more of the variables explained.

I find some of the lack of detail with Lobell’s publication similar to what I have seen criticized at this blog as lacking in tree ring publications and while Lobell is probably as nice a guy as Rob Wilson is, I think their work can never be over critiqued or questioned.

I would like to follow up on some of yours and others’ suggestions here ‘€” but at a more leisurely pace.

Stan Palmer

re 203

Does anybody take the Scientific Amercian seriously? Ever since it was “dumbed down”, it is jas become very political and not scientific.

bernie

Ken:
You wrote:

I find some of the lack of detail with Lobell’s publication similar to what I have seen criticized at this blog as lacking in tree ring publications and while Lobell is probably as nice a guy as Rob Wilson is, I think their work can never be over critiqued or questioned.

This I believe is the important meta-point and fits with the issues that Steve and others have worked so hard to bring to light. The recurring weakness in much of this work is a lack of specificity and transparancy, without which replication is very difficult, if not impossible. I am sure that if Lobell and Field had spelled out their model, its limitations would have been self evident. As presented, we are left with a potentially important conclusion, a ready sound bite, accompanied with a silent “trust us”. That is less the stance of scientists and more the pitch of stock promoters and politicians.

bernie

Sinan
Cute, since the realists seemed to have won. The sad thing is that the 6th graders showed more sense than a number of our Senators – not to mention one ex-Senator.

jae

In the previous Unthreaded Thread (#289), I summarized my efforts to determine climate sensitivity (degrees/watt-meter-2) by looking at annual changes in Solar radiation and December ‘€” July temperature changes. I have now expanded my U.S. climate sensitivity spreadsheet to 138 locations and think I have solved the puzzle of why sensitivity west of the Sierras and Cascades is less than half of that for the rest of the Nation. I now make the following conclusions based on this data:

1. Sensitivity varies greatly over the USA, but is remarkably consistent within general climate regimes. For example, sensitivity for all locations West of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Ranges, including Hawaii and the Sitka Peninsula, is about 0.05 deg/watt/m-2 and is very uniform, with the exception of San Francisco, which has a sensitivity of 0.08. The sensitivity in this zone is less than half of that for the rest of the US, which I believe is attributable to the influence of the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean; as the warm air rises it has to be replaced by cool marine air in this part of the world. That is probably why the summer climate along the West Coast is more pleasant and less “muggy” than that in the East. I have a hunch that San Francisco is different because of Easterly winds in the summer (does anyone know if this is true?). Windspeed data (see spreadsheet) also show San Francisco to be much windier than all other West Coast (or inland) locations, so I think that has something to do with it’s higher sensitivity.

2. The average sensitivity for all locations is 0.11 deg/watt/m-2, very close to that determined by Idso in his famous experiments.

3. The sensitivity for virtually all locations East of the Rocky Mountains is about 0.10-0.14, and this is also strikingly uniform across the entire area. This is attributed to the fact that warm air that rises in this area is replaced by much warmer air than is the case on the West Coast (warmer water, much landmass). Some areas near the Great Lakes show slightly lower sensitivities (0.09), probably due to the cooling effects of air over those lakes.

4. The sensitivities in the areas Eest of the Sierras and Cascades and West of the Rocky Mountains are linked very closely to altitude by a logarithmic relationship (R2 of 0.66 to 0.74, depending upon whether the West Coast and the Desert Southwest are included. (Figs 1 &3). The highest sensitivities, 0.20 and 0.22, we at the highest elevations, Alamosa CO and Flagstaff, AZ.

5. July absolute humidity does not appear to be correlated to sensitivity in the West where there is significant variation (R2 = 0.003 to 0.01, Figs 1 and 2). However, when elevation x humidity is plotted against sensitivity, the correlation is a little better than that between elevation and sensitivity (R2 of 0.68 to 0.85, cf. 0.66 to 0.74, Figs. 1-3). This suggests to me that there little, if any, positive water vapor feedback mechanism.

6. There is a strong correlation between latitude and sensitivity, but it is positive and appears to be logarithmic (R2 = 0.62, Fig. 4) for the Left Coast and negative and linear (R2 = 0.0.62, Fig. 5) for the areas between the Cascades and Rockies. Another puzzle.

The fact that there is not much temperature difference between Sacramento, CA and the city of Dodge City, KS (24.3 vs 26.8 C),which is at approximately the same latitude, when Dodge City has twice the sensitivity, is intriguing. Where does all the extra heat go at Dodge City? The July absolute humidities are not all that much different, either.(11.8 vs. 14.0 g/m-3). It probably heats a much thicker layer of water-laden air, which releases more heat to space. Maybe there are just some very non-linear relationships going on that I don’t understand. Another puzzle.

If these estimates mean anything, and if the 3.7 watts/m-2 for a doubling of CO2 are correct, the West Coast could warm by a whopping 0.18 degrees. The Eastern 2/3 of the US could warm by about 0.4 degrees, and Flagstaff could warm by one degree.

As I mentioned before, it appears that the idea of a “global climate sensitivity” is about as meaningful as a “global average temperature,” for the same reasons outlined by McKitrick, et. al. in their recent paper.

If someone sees a fatal flaw in all this, please speak up so I can quit thinking about it.

David Archibald

Re 210, you have enough to publish on and it would be good for the common weal if you did so. The fact that you got close to Idso’s numbers, independently, suggests that your methodology is correct. It is important that more papers get published backing up Idso’s work. I get 2.86 watts for a doubling, but I suggest that you check at the MODTRANS site. Don’t be limited by the doubling thing. Choose your own levels. These are my numbers, for what it is worth:

ppm watts/m2
280 280.9
300 280.6
320 280.3
340 280.1
360 279.8
380 279.6
400 279.4
420 279.2
440 279.0
460 278.8
480 278.6
500 278.5
520 278.3
540 278.1
560 278.0
580 277.9
600 277.7
620 277.6

AGW is real but miniscule.

geove

Isn’t the weather climate around San Francisco regulated by the cold oceans currents flowing down the west coast from Alaska.

Allan Ames

re 210:
I am new to the discussion, so forgive me if I have missed something.
It strikes me that the climate sensitivity(C) and adiabatic lapse rate(L) are closely related, with C being local averages of L converted (with some difficulty with time and volume derivatives) from PV to power. If so, then the C depends sharply on total moisture content, and should then show dependence on wind direction relative to the nearest mountain chain.

David Smith

A question for someone statistically-gifted, and pardon me since this has likely been answered in past threads:

Suppose I have two time series and I want to see if they are correlated to a significant extent. I do a standard correlation check and find that there is not a significant correlation.

But then I smooth the two series (averaging adjacent values, then maybe doing a double-smoothing and triple-smoothing) so that only the broad variations of the series are left. I then do a standard correlation check and find that r has increased, such that the test indicates significant correlation.

Have I “cheated”? It seems like the only correlation that should count is between unsmoothed time series, yet smoothing is a common practice and correlations are made between smoothed series.

Thanks.

jae

216, 219: Thanks for your input. I have to study lapse rates some more. Whatever the exact explanation is, it seems clear to me that water vapor exerts a NEGATIVE forcing, which is contrary to what all the GCM guys are saying.

richardT

#218
Smoothing the data reduces the effective number of degrees of freedom, if you don’t account for this, any statistical test will be prone to type 1 errors (incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis of no correlation).

Ken Fritsch

Barry B. and Bernie, just a brief update to let you know that I tried a correlation of days over 95 degrees F (DO95F) for the months of July/August for IL corn and soybeans (as suggested, through Barry, by the experts for corn) with delta yield. I used only one site (Champaign) for my DO95F, but selected it to be central to the IL grain belt. The correlation improved over the use of Max temp with corn producing an R^2 = 0.68 and for soybeans R^2 = 0.47. The DOF95 correlated with Max Temperature with R^2 = 0.52. The effects of low moisture were not separable from DO95F.

These are strong temperature correlations here and to view how they occur over time I present the graph below showing the reoccurrences from the time period 1948 to 2006. I see something more that I would expect from cyclical natural events than a climate trend.

I also followed up on the references from the Lobell paper to determine how difficult it would be to replicate what the authors did. The reference to the crop yields and acreages, here, was found as the authors noted in their paper and turn out to be available from 1961 to 2004 as analyzed by the authors and on a nation by nation basis.

http://faostat.fao.org/site/408/default.aspx

I would than assume that the authors used nation by nation yield and acreage data, weighted by acreage, and used the CRU grid temperatures and precipitation data on a nation wide basis. If I attempt to replicate some of the authors’ work from a different viewpoint I would initiate it by starting on a nation by nation basis. Do any of you have any preferences?

Pete

#222

2^{8}$ question $

Steve,
If the question is to estimate the number of effective parameters (or equivalently the number of degrees of freedom), nonparametric fitting provides the answer.

It is the trace of the “hat” matrix.

R documentation

— Pete

David Smith

Re #222, #223

Thanks

My question was prompted by Figure 1 of Emanuel’s recent GRL comment on Michael et al’s paper . Figure 1 is a truncated version of his well-known 2005 plot. The Figure shows r-squared of 0.88, based on correlating two double-smoothed curves. That seems impressive.

When I try to replicate it, I come close (r-squared = 0.82), so my data looks like a reasonable replication. When I use my data to look at the correlation of the unsmoothed values, though, I get r-squared of 0.46, which seems much less significant. So, I’m trying to make sense of all that.

(Ken F., if you’re around, a free copy of Michael’s reply to Emanuel is here , courtesy of World Climate Report, as are the above links. )

DaleC

Here is an interesting one:

“Leap Year Error Mars Global Warming”

“…Most climate experts are predicting a sharp increase in global temperatures in the next 50 to 100 years, so the need for accurate data is more important than ever…”

See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/585355/posts

paminator

Jae, re #210

Very clever natural experiment. Any ideas on the error bars associated with the solar insolation data?
The link for your excel file in #210 does not seem to be functioning. Any suggestions? Has anyone else downloaded the excel sheet?

jae

232. Hmm, the link works for me. Try again? I have no idea how you would determine error bars for the 30-year average solar insulation data. BTW, the data is here.

Paul Linsay

##218, David,

Smoothing is a a form of frequency filter. It removes the high frequency components and leaves the low frequency components. Do it enough on two different time series and you just have a pair of constants left, which correlate perfectly.

If you are interested in the relation between a particular smoothing function and the frequency domain you have to know something about Fourier analysis and z-transforms, available in any standard book on signal processing. Ths short description is that smoothing of a time series is the convolution of the smoothing function, e.g. 1-2-2-1, with the time series. By the convolution theorem, in frequency space this is the product of the Fourier transform of the time series with the FT of the smoothing function. The FT of a smoothing function is typically peaked at zero frequency and falls off quickly at higher frequencies. That’s why smoothing gets rid of the wiggles in the original time series. Do the smoothing a second time and you’re squaring the FT of the smoothing function making it even more sharply peaked at zero and reducing the high frequencies even more. Do this N times and the FT of the smoothing function is raised to the Nth power, making it very sharply peaked at zero indeed.

Smoothing is done in the analysis of climate data all the time with no apparent justification, at least none that I can discern. It throws away a lot of interesting data without adding anything except spurious correlation. These people don’t seem to understand that “noise” carries lots of information and may even be the signal itself. They seem to be stuck on a purely deterministic model of climate without understanding that a stochastic model might be more fruitful.

Steve McIntyre

#236,237. People interested in this should also reflect on the Slutsky phenomenon from successive smoothing/integrations. Klemeš added the observation in a climate context that many hydrological series are natural integrals.

David Smith

Re #236

Thanks, Paul. In the case of the data I’m examining (Atlantic SST, hurricane ACE and sea level pressure time series) the use of smoothing might remove higher-frequency events (like El Nino / La Nina) and leave behind the lower-frequency oscillations.

What’s bizarre about processing my data (SST, hurricane, SLP) using double-smoothing is that what I’m left with appears remarkably like solar signals, especially since the 1960s. I did not expect that. I’m agnostic on solar cycle / climate connections.

It would be a hoot if Emanuel’s CO2/SST/hurricane correlation is actually a solar/SST/hurricane correlation.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #233 and #235

The distributions, that I encountered in my analysis of Lobell, fit log normals with the exception of the Days Over 95 Degrees F which obviously had too many 0s in the time series. Using rank and non-parametric Spearman correlation the results and relationships stay essentially the same. On further thought your caution on using a non-parametric statistic is well taken and something I should have done without looking at log normal distributions.

I did report the Days over 95 F correlation with delta corn and soybean yields as a Pearson product moment and that is a mistake on my part. I did obtain a high correlation using rank correlations, but I am not certain with so many 0s if even that procedure is correct. That distribution looks like a Poisson distribution but with a variance (much) larger than the mean and as I recall a negative binomial may be the better fit in these cases. I plan to look further at it.

David Smith

And for something different, here is Barrow, Alaska’s current webcam view. The view shows a couple of town blocks with the ocean beyond. Current (25 March) temperature is -28C.

Daylight is returning. The whiteness must be blinding at times.

bernie

At RealClimate they are addressing (or perhaps not addressing) the issues raised in Does a global temperature exist? Is a clarification of the underlying issue needed?

Mark T.

#236,237. People interested in this should also reflect on the Slutsky phenomenon from successive smoothing/integrations. Klemeš added the observation in a climate context that many hydrological series are natural integrals.

This is a well known communications problem (signal processing in general). If the incoming data are not filtered with the exact transmission filter, intersymbol interference occurs. Filtering “spreads” the energy of a signal across time. In the comm context, this means that a bit at time t = 0, will have energy from future and past symbols.

Mark

Ken Fritsch

Re #245

Barry B., I looked at days with a minimum temperature over 77 degrees F in the July/Aug time period for the same station (Champaign-Urbana) where I found the over 95 degree maximum temperatures. In this area, over 77 F minimum temperature days are much rarer than the days with over 95 F for a maximum temperature. For the 1948-2004 period I found only 7 days with a 77 F or greater minimum temperature — 1 in 1955, 2 in 1966, 3 in 1983 and 1 in 1998. These conditions might explain why the crop yields are consistently high in this area of IL.

For IL, minimum temperatures were not as important as maximum temperatures and the products of maximum temperature and precipitation when I included that statistic in my calculations. It was not at all important for soybean delta yields. That is not saying that in warmer climates the minimum may be more important.

bernie

Ken:
So you did find a significant interaction effect between temperature and precipitation? If so, then the Lobell model is under-specified, right?
I focus on this, because I seem to see it as a recurring theme in the studies involving proxies. Bernie

David Smith

NOAA has a website that offers various maps showing recent weather history. For instance global temperature.

The map, based on raw data, for the last 180 days is here . (The lower map shows the anomaly.)

The map, after “reanalysis” (adjustment), is here .

I believe that the adjusted version becomes the official record.

The reanalysis generally warmed things, versus the raw temperature data. For some reason I’m not surprised.

Barry B.

Re: #250

Ken, I have to apologize, I sent you on a wild goose chase. I meant to suggest looking at the daily mean temperature >77 degrees F but after a quick look at some of the Urbana data, I now realize this will not provide any further insight into the heat/yield relationship. The Purdue publication which I linked to earlier defined this as a threshold where yields started to drop but it was only when mean temperature exceeded 77 degrees F on the same day that max temps exceeded 95 degrees F. So in other words, I was in error to begin with.

Thanks for being so patient with my errant suggestion.

MarkR

Why Bad Beliefs Don’t Die

Because beliefs are designed to enhance our ability to survive, they are biologically designed to be strongly resistant to change. To change beliefs, skeptics must address the brain’s “survival” issues of meanings and implications in addition to discussing their data.

The lesson for skeptics is to understand that people are generally not intending to be mean, contrary, harsh, or stupid when they are challenged. It’s a fight for survival. The only effective way to deal with this type of defensiveness is to de-escalate the fighting rather than inflame it. Becoming sarcastic or demeaning simply gives the other person’s defenses a foothold to engage in a tit-for-tat exchange that justifies their feelings of being threatened (“Of course we fight the skeptics-look what uncaring, hostile jerks they are!”) rather than a continued focus on the truth.

Skeptics will only win the war for rational beliefs by continuing, even in the face of defensive responses from others, to use behavior that is unfailingly dignified and tactful and that communicates respect and wisdom. For the data to speak loudly, skeptics must always refrain from screaming.

Finally, it should be comforting to all skeptics to remember that the truly amazing part of all of this is not that so few beliefs change or that people can be so irrational, but that anyone’s beliefs ever change at all. Skeptics’ ability to alter their own beliefs in response to data is a true gift; a unique, powerful, and precious ability. It is genuinely a “higher brain function” in that it goes against some of the most natural and fundamental biological urges. Skeptics must appreciate the power and, truly, the dangerousness that this ability bestows upon them. They have in their possession a skill that can be frightening, life-changing, and capable of inducing pain. In turning this ability on others it should be used carefully and wisely. Challenging beliefs must always be done with care and compassion.

Skeptics must remember to always keep their eye on the goal. They must see the long view. They must attempt to win the war for rational beliefs, not to engage in a fight to the death over any one particular battle with any one particular individual or any one particular belief. Not only must skeptics’ methods and data be clean, direct, and unbiased, their demeanor and behavior must be as well.

Link

Gerhard H. Wrodnigg

Just a question:

Is anyone here participating the

European Geosciences Union
General Assembly 2007
Vienna, Austria, 15 ‘€” 20 April 2007
http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2007/

If so, please contact me at climate.at.dagegen.org and I will organise a Climate Audit Vienna Event…

Hans

TWO ITEMS, one is a reaction to #258 from MarkR, and the other is a short curious (if spurious) weather item from THE AUSTRALIAN, regarding Perth, a city in Western Australia that usually has very warm weather, even when summer is drawing to a close Down Under. The site referred to below is also a good source of up-to-date information (via RADAR precipitation mapping) on how the long drought in Australia appears to be finally breaking (let’s hope, for the sake of our brothers and sisters, and for the sake of the flora and fauna, in Australia!).

I actually recognize MarkR’s sentiments as, at their core, being in tune with those of many of the writers on this site, foremost with Steve McIntyre’s own thinking. Steve can better speak for himself at http://www.climatesearch.com/newsDetail.cfm?nwsId=131

Just in case MarkR has not been on this site long enough to recognize the apparent motivation of most of the contributors who visit, I have to defend them somewhat by saying that I have never found them to be primarily driven by anything resembling an “attempt to win the WAR for rational beliefs” let alone engaging “in a fight to the DEATH over any one particular battle with any one particular individual or any one particular belief.” I was not aware this was a war of beliefs, although sadly some may view it that way.

What I have recognized here is the implicit and sometimes explicit hope and expectation of the various contributors at Climate Audit that the Convinced Climate Change Community [CCCC] exercise a little more care with respect to the CCCC’s own research methodology. To establish standards, to follow them, to work to proper peer review, to leave an audit trail and provide decent access to data archives — these would seem to be minimally acceptable standards. That is what Steve meant when he wrote “For someone used to processes where prospectuses require qualifying reports from independent geologists, the lack of independence is simply breathtaking and a recipe for problems, regardless of the reasons initially prompting this strange arrangement”.

So I would challenge MarkR to clarify why he thinks this is primarily a site for “skeptics” while I see it primarily as a site for promoting sensible and clear thinking about the scientific methodology that must be employed for this very important endeavour. As to sarcasm, frequent visitors will acknowledge that Steve’s tolerance for that is nonexistent.

No one here is suggesting that we ignore the possibility of AGW come what may, by sticking to our “bad beliefs” (some of which are indeed evolutionarily resistant to change). If the studies are properly done and begin to suggest that AGW is of valid concern, most contributors here would be on the forefront of the movement to take and demand decisive action. No one here wants to boil along with the proverbial frog in the barrel of water which is slowly brought up to the boiling point. That kind of “bad belief” is of little advantage to any species’ chance of long-term survival.

“Challenging beliefs must always be done with care and compassion.” No argument there. The dismaying thing is that we have to work on belief systems at all. When what should by its nature be a scientific pursuit becomes a religion, we unfortunately all have to necessarily tread carefully.

Cold mornings in Perth will continue
By Rebecca Lodin
March 27, 2007 18:06

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/weather/index/

On Tuesday morning Perth had a minimum temperature of 6.3 degrees. This was their coldest morning this early in the year since records began 110 years ago. These cold temperatures are expected to continue on Wednesday, and may get even cooler.

This shivery morning follows a cold front that recently passed over the southwest, bringing cooler, drier air to southwestern WA. Calm conditions with almost nonexistent winds also helped keep the temperatures down.

Temperatures are expected to be even cooler tomorrow, as a ridge of high pressure strengthens over the southwest and dew points lower further. Although minimum temperatures will stay relatively low over the couple of days, tomorrow is expected to be the coldest.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #262 – Similar to Fall 2005 in California. Many ski areas opened on October 20th that year.

S. Hales

MarkR,

The site you linked to has the following item about climate change. I guess you could call it skeptics about skeptics. Or True Skeptics and False Skeptics. The main thrust of the piece is how to better communicate urgency and breakthrough the citizen’s information overload or exhaustion. It uses a term dear to my heart “diffusion of inovations” or in this instance diffusion of ideas. The framing of the climate problem in these terms means that there are early adopters of ideas and if they are opinion leaders then there will eventually be a surge in adoption of the idea following the standard logistics curve. It is interesting that the author cites the bifurcation of opinion along party lines in the US with the democrats at near saturation of adoption and the republicans somewhere lower with no true opinion leaders in their ranks. The author frames this bifurcation in terms of level of exposure to “nuanced” treatments of the subject such as might be found in the New York Times; here is a recent nuanced treatment in the Times. Here is a quote from that article

“A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But it’s happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States.”

Another quote to show another “nuance”

The fear is that what happened to Summerhaven is a taste of things to come. As heat-stressed ecosystems provide fuel at the edges of new homes, catastrophic fires could become the new normal. Dr. Swetnam compares it to new developments in hurricane-prone areas in the Southeast.

Since readers of this blog know that GW or AGW in particular plays little or no role in frequency or intensity of Atlantic hurricanes or TS this particular “nuance” seems to be a belief without strong scientific support (enter Chris Landsea). (As an aside it looks like western fire studies are the new hurricane attribution studies)

For the patient reader a visit to the author’s website might prove fruitful in examing how a sceptic frames skeptics. The lead today is the Oxford Group study on the unsustainability of nuclear power. The powerful meme in this analysis is the “energy cliff” which is simply another “net energy” meme that dismisses economic efficiency and only focuses on engineering efficiency. The Oxford study fails to calculate time to depletion if reprocessing is used nor do they look at ultimate recoverable resources nor do they estimate future technological innovations. Again the nuance here seems to be if it supports your current beliefs and you are a noted sceptic with psicop sceptic credentials then it must be true.

Martin Lewitt

realclimate.org has censored again, when they get uncomfortable with the issues that have been raised. They apparently censor so that they can let their responses go unchallenged and appear to be accepted as conclusive. I’ve tried to contact Ray Pierrehumbert directly, twice but have received no response. The last post/exchange was #102 at:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/climate-reporting-in-physics-world/

Here is my email to Dr. Pierrehumbert, which incorporates, my second attempt to post my response to the thread. Let noone mistake realclimate.org for an open scientific discussion.
====== begin my email =====
Dr. Pierrehumbert,

A couple of my posts in dialogue with you have not appeared on RC “Climate Reporting in Physics World”. Given the collective management of RC, and the coincidence of their failure to appear with Gavin’s arrival on this thread, I am concerned that you may not have had a chance to see them before a decision was made to avoid them.

I am particularly intrigued by idea that the dry air deficit that you found may be a partial explanation for the endemic bias that Roesch found.

I append only the second post after my signature below, because it incorporates the first.

— regards,
Martin

[my personal sig with contact info was here, this is the only deletion]
======== the second missing post =======
Raypierre, in your 2005 paper “On the Relative Humidity of the Earth’s Atmosphere” pg 39, you describe a mechanism by which low resolution GCM studies such as the ERA40 analysis you used, may be deficient in dry air due to excessive mixing or leaking of moisture from saturated air. You speculate that this may be endemic to “low resolution” GCMs. It seems to me that this could partially explain the excessive snow cover and precipitation Roesch found in the AR4 models, as that moisture might have to travel farther and to colder regions to precipitate out. The extra moisture in the atmosphere would also enhance the H20 water vapor positive feedback, providing the extra warming to balance the positive albedo bias against solar. Of course, this wouldn’t be the complete explanation of the Roesch results, because he also found positive albedo biases in the tropical deserts, and positive albedo biases in the parameterizations of snow cover in forested regions. Do you have more recent information shedding more light on the extent of this issue, and thoughts about whether it might be responsible or have contributed to some of the positive surface albedo bias that Roesch found?

Also, here I resubmit an earlier response that was apparently lost:

Re: Raypierre’s response to #102

The models matched the 20th century data by incorporating a major stabilizing influence in which albedo increases with temperature. Roesch’s analysis showed that by failing to reproduce the negative Snow Cover Area trend of the climate in the recent decades, the models had a positive surface albedo bias. The temperature was increasing over this period. To the extent, that the models achieve that temperature increase by replacing that reflected solar energy with increased sensitivity to GHGs, like thoroughbred horses, they are ready to burst out of the gate once no longer constrained to fit actual climate data.

The IPCC SPD does not provide additional error bars for the projections of models, based on the errors documented in the various diagnostic studies. The IPCC assumes that the range of model sensitivities in the AR4 meta-ensemble brackets the actual climate sensitivity and represents the error in the models. A bias against solar in all of the AR4 models, shows that their whole estimate may be biased towards higher CO2 sensitivities. The SPD does not quantitatively compare the models errors against the energy imbalance quantity they must be accurate enough to represent, attribute and project.

Correcting the models’ shortcomings, would likely result in the matching of the recent warming with less sensitivity to GHGs, and thus would result in lower future projections. At some point the temperature dependent stablizing component (positive albedo bias due to increased snow cover area and precipitation), that is in the models but not in the climate, will be overcome by further temperature increases, and the models will take the temperature excursions they project in the latter half of this century.

Models are at the center of climate science, testing the various hypotheses, and providing insights when they do reproduce climate behaviors. While I am among those that argue that the models have little or no projective and attributive skill based on the current evidence, I am hopeful that such skill may be possible in the future.

jae

OK. C02 problem solved!

James Erlandson

Re 270, 271:
Summary here.
CLIMATE: DOE finds sequestration capacity for 900 years of CO2 emissions

jae

273: Great. We need a modeling expert around here to audit these monsters. Maybe you can write up your thoughts and submit them to Steve M. for a special thread?

Steve Sadlov

Shameless self promotion ….. my personal contribution to climate science:

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/hps/NEW/INFO/MSS.html

One of the subsystems in one of the mass storage systems described here was developed by a team I was part of about 20 years ago. 🙂

David Smith

WCR reviews a paper on western US drought and wildfires here . The usual suspects (ENSO, PDO, AMO) are examined with the warm-phase AMO getting a surprising amount of credit for western wildfires and drought.

Looks like California has only a couple of chances for rain left before the Pacific shuts down for the dry season.

Armin

Something off-topic, but did you change today/yesterday something in the layout of this webpage? Suddenly the print-preview only shows empty pages, the type-preview is gone and the right bar is displayed partly over the right part of the article text?

Or is my system the cause? 🙂

MarkW

There may be other motives that drive some of these people:

Maurice Strong, senior advisor to Kofi Annan. Chaired the “UN Conference on Environment and Development”, 1992.
Reponsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol.

“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”

“quest for poverty … reduced resource consumption … and set levels of mortality control.”

——————

Timothy Wirth, US Undersecretary of State for Global Issues
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

richard Benedick, deputy assistant secretary of state who headed policy divisions of the US State Department.
“A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect.”

Ken Fritsch

Re: #283

The political part of the Jim Hansen split personality seems to be rapidly taking over the scientist part. I guess a skeptic in these matters might want to concede some merit to his argument from a contrarians’ point of view, but since he mostly pushes the consensus advantage when it benefits his advocacy stands, it is difficult to understand how he can plead a special contrarian case for the times (few) that he is in disagreement with the consensus (IPCC in this special case). The approach here is much more likely to be used by a politician than a scientist.

Luboš Motl

Have you seen the revolution in borehole reconstructions that curiously happened exactly when MBH98 was published?

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/borehole-paleoclimate-reconstructions.html

Joe Cool

Greenhouse Gas Effect Consistent Over 420 Million Years
(emphasis mine)

This study confirms that in the Earth’s past 420 million years, each doubling of atmospheric CO2 translates to an average global temperature increase of about 3° Celsius, or 5° Fahrenheit

This study used 500 data points in the geological records as “proxy data” and evaluated them in the context of the CO2 cycling models of co-author Robert Berner, professor emeritus of geology and geophysics at Yale who pioneered models of the balance of CO2 in the Earth and Earth’s atmosphere.

So, 500 data points covering 450 million years confirms this fact. Guess you guys can all go home now.

“Our results are consistent with estimates from shorter-term records, and indicate that climate sensitivity was almost certainly greater than 1.5, but less than 5.5 degrees Celsius over this period,” said Park. “At those extremes of CO2 sensitivity, [1.5°C or 5.5°C] the carbon-cycle would have been in a ‘perfect storm’ condition.”

So the climate sensitivity is 0°C to 5.5°C?? Not sure this surprises me with them only using 500 points over 450 million years.

Sorry, I’m no scientist/statistician/expert. Am I wrong for feeling they way I do when I read this “article”?

Mark T.

From JMS on the protected thread…

commentors on this blog seem to have a suspicion of deep knowledge of a subject. That does not make for good science,

Unbelievable such arrogance is. Unbelievable. Tell that to Gavin.

Mark

gb

Re # 285. Interesting. Perhaps you should correlate world’s population or obesity with CO2 levels or temperature. I guess the correlation is quite strong.

David Smith

RE #291 David A, I’m unable to download your paper from Hughes’ website for some unknown reason. If it’s not a problem, could you e-mail it to me at mndsmith33 at earthlink.net ? I’m quite interested in learning more about the topic.

Thanks

Ken Fritsch

Re: #292

My guess is that you do not realize what kind of analyses I have been doing. I have been comparing the deviations from a trend line not trend lines and then only for variables that are known to be related like crop yields and climate.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #289 – got aliasing? LOL …. Shannon is also rolling in his grave ….

Steve Sadlov

RE: #295 – this is a great teaching moment regarding the behavior of Arctic sea ice. Steve M had mentioned earlier how Arctic sea ice tends to be “manufactured” in certain locations in the far Eastern part of the basin (a bit south of the pole, North of Asia and Alaska), then slowly drifts toward the West, ending up mostly in the North Atlantic.

MarkR

#261 David Smith

Try uploading your info to http://www.esnips.com it’s free. I think if you view your spreadsheet through internet explorer, you will be able to cut and save it for public viewing via a link.

David Smith

Re #302, Thanks, Mark. I’ll try that tonight.

James Erlandson

And now for something completely different.
From NewScientist.com

Could dandruff be altering the world’s climate? Along with fur, algae, pollen, fungi, bacteria, viruses and various other “bio-aerosols” wafting around in the atmosphere, it may well be.

Original report in Science Magazine

Suspended atmospheric particles play a crucial role in any global climate scenario: They can both enforce and suppress radiative forcing. In developing climate modeling further, a deeper understanding of atmospheric aerosol is needed. Because of extreme local and temporal variations, proper incorporation of aerosols into models requires modeling of the aerosol itself. It turns out that cellular material and proteins compose up to 25% of the atmospheric aerosol. Consequently, the source strength of the biogenic aerosol in general must be corrected and should be estimated on the order of other major aerosol sources.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #297

My references where regarding the recently published Lobell and Field paper here.

Did you read the paper? I think you might be getting into the tail end of the discussion.

Click to access erl7_1_014002.pdf

DeWitt Payne

Re: #299

Combine near term global cooling with Peak Oil and things get really ugly really fast. Here’s hoping the cornucopists and warmers aren’t completely wrong.

And on a more humorous (I hope) note, try No Impact Man .

Sprentuk

Hmmm

“I should add that I am sure Phil Jones would make data available to a reputable scientists if asked. Data from NERC funded projects is archived at the British Atmopsheric Data Centre (BADC)”

About ten posts down here – http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=10946&posts=18&start=1
http://www.seaes.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/staff/staffprofile.php?id=97

David Smith

Test

(I’m trying to figure out how to post a spreadsheet chart, but when you’re a dunderhead, it’s not easy.)

If anyone can successfully open this Excel spreadsheet, or not, please let me know. It may be password-protected. Thanks.

Joel McDade

This is for R newbies like me that are following this site hoping to learn something. Here is a reproduction of the distribution curve prepared by Paul Lindsay in the first of his hurricane threads:

hur 1944)
hist(hcount,breaks=seq(0,19),xlab="Hurricanes/Year",main=NULL,col="red",
right=F,xlim=c(0,20),ylim=c(0,12))
x

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1022

Mark T.

From the data access thread, a reply to Armand:

So what exactly are you suggesting *does* violate causality?

CO2 lags temperature rise in the historic record (albeit coarse for temp). The delta is around 400-800 years or so.

I agree a simplistic approach to all this is not necessarily valid, but we are force fed the concept of CO2 being the majority forcer in temperature rise by climatologists. If this is true, then by extension CO2 must lead temperature rise. It does not, therefore it cannot be the sole forcer, nor even the majority. There’s nothing wrong with assuming there is an impact, but that impact will show up as a temperature perturbation that lags CO2 rise.

Mark

Armand MacMurray

Re:#318
OK, I guess I was being too literal in my interpretation of your comments. My impression of the “dogma” is different than yours. My understanding of the claim is that while something else (Milankovic cycles?) may have initiated a multi-thousand-year warming, resulting in an initial increase in CO2 levels over a few hundred years, CO2 is plausibly responsible for the bulk of the warming past that initial stage, in a positive feedback process (at least up to a point). No causality problem there, because the CO2 is leading to later warming, with the early warming caused by “something else”.

John Lang

To #320 – CO2 increases from 180 ppm to 280 pmm from the height of the ice age to the height of the interglacial.

Temperature increases by 5C globally (10C at the poles.)

The CO2 can only be responsible for 1C to 2C of the total warming.

The rest of the warming 60% to 80% of it is cyclical or natural. Al Gore didn’t tell you that did he. He just said it was “complicated.”

DeWitt Payne

#320

Let me run this hypothesis up another flagpole for comment. Greenhouse warming is a logarithmic function of concentration. Each doubling produces the same delta H and thus the same delta T. My hypothesis is that latent heat transfer from water evaporation and condensation is an exponential function of temperature. That implies that as the temperature increases, delta T from a given delta H, otherwise known as climate sensitivity, decreases, possibly rapidly. At the average surface temperature of 288 K, we are well into the exponential increase with latent heat loss of about 75 W/sq.m.

bender

Re #323
LOL. Ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

jae

324, 327, Yup, see my spreadsheet. One can make a case that there is no water vapor feedback that causes a temperature rise by comparing Denver to Indianapolis, IN. Same latitude, almost same July avg. temp, even less solar insolation in Indianapolis. Yet July absolute humidities are twice as high in Indianapolis and the climate sensitivities are the same. There is a water bapor feedback from a temperature rise, all right, but it is simply more water vapor (and muggy nights).

paminator

Jae, #328-

I checked out the site you used for the solar insolation data. I have not found any error estimates yet, but I will keep looking. I still think your approach is valid, and I am willing to compile some more of this data for your spreadseet to see how it works out. I am also interested in how it compares with data from more northern climates such as northern Canada.

I still have not been able to get your spreadsheet to download. Your link takes me to the following blank page: http://esnips.com/HomeAction.ns;jsessionid=AF7DE9EA9DF469684459B5158997D68E. Any help would be much appreciated.

bender

#331 Mmmm hmmm.

bernie

Would anyone like to comment. UHI explains 50 year rise in California Temp

Seems when researchers look for an UHI they find it big time!!

DeWitt Payne

#335

CO2 never becomes the major driver of temperature change during the switches between glacial and interglacial regimes. That’s a straw man. The contribution from CO2 and water vapor is at most 30% of the total forcing over the 10,000 or so years it takes to heat or cool. Also, the increase (decrease on cooling) in CO2 is not a step function. Which is why you don’t see an obvious change of slope in the temperature curve.

Willis Eschenbach

#336 But if CO2 is adding 30% to the forcing, surely the slope of the warming should get steeper, no?

w.

Ron Cram

I have written the first drafts of two articles for Wikipedia recently. The first on Scientific data archiving. The second on Scientific data withholding. The best version of the data withholding article (containing the discussion of Michael Mann and Steve McIntyre) can be found here.

William Connelly has nominated the article on data withholding for very fast deletion. It appears to me that he is too close to the subject to be objective. I made an attempt to write the article NPOV, according to wikipedia policy and all comments are well sourced. Please take
a look to see if all the pertinent facts are available to readers. If you think the article has value, please say so on the Talk page.

L Nettles

US. Supreme Court rules in CO2 Case

Mass. v. EPA

DeWitt Payne

#336 But if CO2 is adding 30% to the forcing, surely the slope of the warming should get steeper, no?

Here’s the transition from the last glacial to the current (Holocene) interglacial based on Petit’s 1999 deuterium analysis of Vostok ice cores and the GT4 time scale:

Hardly a smooth curve. I fail to see how this proves anything about CO2 one way or the other.

S. Hales

Bernie, In your posst about UHI the article starts out ok but devolves into a non-sequitor from the subject of the piece. The first 8 or so paragraphs are a reasonable summary of the study’s findings but beginning with the last sentence of paragraph eight the article makes a grand leap away from UHI to AGW in general listing all the ills to befall Cal residents if emissions continue to rise. The author seems not to realize that UHI and land use changes contaminates the surface record in Cal and any projections of future climate there must account for UHI and land use changes. Another possibility is the author thinks that UHI is made worse by higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 so the leap to AGW in the last half of the article. Bizzare!

Here is the link to the JPL study (link tags don’t seem to be working)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-035

DeWitt Payne

Should think more before posting. Here’s a properly sized chart with CO2 added. Maybe someone else has finer time resolution on the CO2, but this is what I found. CO2 and temperature are clearly correlated, but since we don’t really know the shape of the other forcings, I don’t think you can prove anything one way or another about CO2 from this data, so I’ll still go with the physics that says CO2 must add some fraction to the warming.

Nicholas

L Nettles : Well, I guess it’s official. Every time I breathe out, I’m creating “pollution”. That, and the world has gone totally insane. Is it too late to become a hermit?

beng

RE 338: Willis_E says:

But if CO2 is adding 30% to the forcing, surely the slope of the warming should get steeper, no?

I’d think so, if it were 30%. Another consideration is that CO2 levels lag the temp downturns by at least several hundred yrs at the beginning of the glacial period. One would think the rate of temp downturn would be attenuated (30%?) compared to the rate at the start of the interglacial (when CO2 was lower), all else considered equal (a big assumption). But eyeballing the Vostok ice-cores doesn’t show that — the absolute rates of change look very similar.

MarkW

In order for the EPA to have standing to regulate CO2, the court had to find that CO2 was pollutant. They reversed the lower court
ruling that CO2 was not a pollutant.

I have no doubt that the litigants will claim that all the relevant studies have already been done. Specifically IPCC’s I-IV.

And since Al Gore et. al. have been telling us that we have only a few years left before catastrophic warming becomes irreversible,
the litigants will argue that we don’t have time for the formal process. Especially if there is a Democrat in the White House after 2008, it’s likely
that this ruling will result in the effective implementation of Kyoto in a few years.
Without having to go through all the bother of actually passing legislation or trying to pass anything as pesky as a treaty.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #313 – It’s really freaking me out. My cistern system is likely to move from concept to plan soon.

Nicholas

jae : ANY and ALL substances can and do harm humans. I mean, oxygen and water are perhaps the most vital substances to life on this planet (as well as CO2) and yet both of them can easily be harmful. You can die from drinking too much water in certain circumstances. Likewise, 100% oxygen can be very bad for you. If the definition of a pollutant is anything that can harm a human in sufficient quantity, then what ISN’T a pollutant? I just don’t see the point of having a word which is so non-specific…

Practically every day I am walking along and some old diesel-engined truck rumbles past, belching thick black smoke, causing me to cough and sneeze and otherwise feel ill. THAT is a pollutant. THAT is what organizations like the EPA should be regulating. Clearly they aren’t doing a very good job of it. What’s the point of declaring CO2 a pollutant when there are bigger fish for them to fry? I’m far more likely to die from lung cancer contracted from inhalation of diesel particulates than I am AGW, thank you very much.

End of rant.

jae

Here’s the type of thing that intrigues me about the data in my spreadsheet:

Compare Phoenix and Atlanta. Both are at about the same altitude and latitude, and therefore both receive the same TOA solar radiation. Phoenix gets 100 w/m2 more radiation at the surface in July than Atlanta does, and it averages 8 degrees hotter. Atlanta has 49 percent more moisture in the air (absolute humidity), but the surface temperature is lower. Water vapor or clouds appear to be taking the extra heat in Atlanta. Water vapor/cloud feedback appears to be negative in this case. It appears that the extra insolation in Phoenix simply causes higher surface temperatures. Calculated sensitivities are the same at both locations, 0.14 deg/w/m2.

Now compare Indianapolis with Sacramento. Again, both about same altitude and latitude and receive same TOA solar radiation. Sacramento gets 130 (!) w/m2 more surface radiation in July than Indianapolis, but in this case, the July average surface temperatures are the same. Indianapolis has 36 percent more water vapor in the air than Sacramento, but the temperatures are the same. It appears that there is no water vapor feedback in Indianapolis. Where does the extra heat go in Sacramento? Probably to cool pacific airflows, since the sensitivity is 0.05, compared to 0.11 in Indianapolis.

S. Hales

MarkW, The supremes did not declare CO2 an air pollutant in general. They broadly defined air pollutants as per 7602 of the EPA act and simply that the EPA had the regulatory authority to regulate CO2 emissions from new vehicles. The lower court decision was not whether CO2 was not a polutant in general but a narrower interpretation of pollutant contained in the statute. All the rulings have centered around 2 issues the standing of the litigant who shows no reasonable harm in the present and the interpretation of 7602 to grant the EPA authority to regulate CO2 emissions from the tailpipes of new vehicles. No broad definition of CO2 as a pollutant outside of the statute has been claimed.

Michael Jankowski

It appears that there is no water vapor feedback in Indianapolis. Where does the extra heat go in Sacramento? Probably to cool pacific airflows, since the sensitivity is 0.05, compared to 0.11 in Indianapolis.

What about river flows through Sacramento cooling things off? I think Indy gets pretty dried-up in the summertime (told sewage treatment plant discharge seems to be the overwhelming flow).

David Smith

March Arctic sea ice anomaly is given here .

Much of the anomaly was north of Europe, which is not a surprise, given the winter weather patterns.

jae

In a nutshell, here is what I’m concluding from the data in the spreadsheet:

1. Climate sensitivity (deg/wm-2) varies according to location, due to geographical features, but it is surprisingly uniform in a given “climate regime,” which I classify into five categories: (a) Pacific Ocean dominated’€”west of the Cascades and Sierras, the Sitka Penninsula, and Hawaii (low sensitivity); (b) northern moderate elevation mountainous areas–Rocky Mountains to Cascade/Sierra crest (moderate sensitivity); (c) high altitude Rocky Mountain (medium ‘€”high sensitivity) (d) Desert Southwest (high sensitivity); and (e) East of Rocky Mountains (moderate sensitivity). Note that each of these regimes is dominated by major geological features: Pacific Ocean, mountains, elevation, desert, etc. In the case of the eastern US, the unimpeded mixing of air masses and high humidity tends to even out the sensitivities in the whole area.

2. Sensitivity to perturbations in radiation is small, ranging from 0.03 deg/wm-2 near the Pacific Ocean to 0.22 deg/wm-2 at certain high elevation locations (Alamosa, CO, Flagstaff, AZ). The average is 0.11, which essentially matches Idso’s calculations.
3. There does not appear to be any positive water vapor feedback, since absolute humidity varies closely with latitude east of the Rocky Mountains, while sensitivity appears unaffected. All other regimes also do not show any relationship between humidity and sensitivity. In fact, all of the most sensitive locations have low humidity (below 13 g/m3), suggesting that if there is any water vapor feedback, it is negative.

I would like to look at Europe next. Does anyone know where I can get data on average monthly solar insolation, temperatures, altitudes, etc. for Europe (or anywhere else, for that matter)? I’ll bet there is tremendous variation in Europe, due to the presence of so many different climate regimes.

David Smith

RE #366 The Cryosphere Today chart shows an odd downward move in March. The regional charts for Barents and Greenland show instantaneous drops that look unphysical. Odd discontinuities like these do not inspire confidence in the sea ice measurement.

Speaking of ice, here is a map of Arctic sea ice age (first year and multi-year). It is somewhat dated (November 2006) but it gives a good portrayal of how young the ice is and how dynamic its movement must be.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #370 – Not to “Da Vinci Code” this or anything, but there is sort of a Fibonacci Sequence describing the formation, movement and eventual dissipation of the ice. :;

Tony

I feel honored to be quoted among a class of people whose intelligence is far beyond mine. Thank you.

Steve McIntyre

bender, nice season for the Gators.

T J Olson

Nicholas (#358) asks:
“What’s the point of declaring CO2 a pollutant when there are bigger fish for them to fry?” They’ve already been fried.

Virtually all noxious air pollutants have declined each decade in the US for forty years. Regulating particulates produced from diesel engines was shown to be cancer causing during the Clinton presidency, but he delayed action. The Bush Administration simply went ahead with what was already known. Now, just today, I say a commercial on a cable TV news channel touting the benefits of low sulfur diesel fuel. This is the result of this regulation: reducing cancer-causing particulates emitted by applying a technological fix.

The costs of air pollution prevention have followed a long path of decline with advancing and more economical technology. Take autos, for instance, Computers regulate air-flow intake and fuel mixtures that carburetors used to, primarily thanks to cheap microchips. Better, more complete fuel burning means less pollution.

The trouble with CO2 “pollution” is that it can’t be solved with more technology, according to present-day knowledge. Generating CO2 is intrinsic to using carbon-based fuels for energy.

Thus the purpose of going after CO2 by enviros and regulators is because the bigger fish have already been fried! Attacking fossil fuel use is an attack on industrialism itself. Bureaucrats rejoice.

Nicholas

T. J. Olson : That may be true in the USA (although, judging by the last
time I was in Los Angeles and the amount of pollution I encountered, I’m not so
sure). However, here in Australia, particulate pollution is still a big
problem. If I leave my window open, a few days later, the window sill is
black with soot. Yet we are already regulating CO2 here (e.g. incandescent
light bulbs are being banned, using CO2 as a justification). Yet, as I say,
trucks and cars belching sooty smoke is a common sight on the roads. Yes, we
have strict emissions standards. But there are lots of older vehicles which
are grandfathered. So, I very much disagree that here at least, all the
“bigger fish have been fried”.

Here’s some food for thought. The more CO2 is regulated in countries like
Australia and the USA, the more we’re going to export our CO2 production to
countries like China and India – countries with poor emissions regulations
and horrible pollution problems. So in effect, regulating CO2 is actually
increasing other forms of pollution. Is that something to be glad of?

P.S. Yes I am aware that much of the famous Los Angeles smog is not actually
pollution. But there are still some dirty places in that city, especially
near the airport, where there is at least one oil refinery.

Mark T.

There may also be long term aging and degradition of the sensor arrays and amplifiers themselves, which also continually shave off signal strength and may also be shaving off apparent coverage percent.

Satellites always have degradation in all of these areas, though the extent is somewhat dependent upon several things. First, where they are at in their respective orbits. LEOs suffer different effects than GEOs due to radiation and particle influences (single event upsets, for example, in digital logic). Also, the level of shielding in the electronics (sensors, amplifiers, even digital) has an impact, which varies depending upon orbit as well. All satellites have a lifetime, and usually there are self-correcting mechanisms to maintain some significant level of system gain over time (i.e. above 90% for the gain path over the life of the satellite). Once the limit is reached, time for an overhaul, or decommissioning.

Mark

Steve Sadlov

RE: #371 – I am going to stick my neck out and make another risky prediction (risk level even higher than my Winter 2006 – 07 Greenland – Iceland ice bridge prediction). For the next 30 years, the world will experience a sharp cooling later leveling off. There will be mega droughts the likes of which have not been seen since at least the 1970s, perhaps even longer. There will be famine.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #386 – If they blame it on AGW, and respond accordingly, they will of course be adding fuel to the fire (or in this case, ice to the freezer). Interestingly, as Biblical as my prediction may seem, it is entirely based on secular analysis. I grabbed a bit of Paleo, threw in some Astrophysics (especially Solar Physics) and spiced it up with some Oceanography and Meteorology specific to the Pacific Ocean. In particular, David Smith and John A may find it of special interest, mostly as a “worst case scenario” thought starter. I hope my prediction is wrong.

Mark T.

What I’m worried about, Steve S., is that they’ll examine the cooling and say “OMG!!!, we didn’t expect our reductions* to be this effective! The climate has a higher sensitivity than we originally thought! Victory!” and respond according to the new mantra, which will be even stricter controls to “guide” the climate.

Mark

* reductions I expect will eventually be in place world-wide.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #390 – A small anecdote. It must have been 1974 or so. February if I recall correctly. There was a most remarkable event, namely, several days of extreme Gulf of Mexico mT intrusion up the Mississippi Valley, so charged with moisture it evntually resulted in torrential flash flood producing rains as far north as Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. A serious warm front with so much energy there were actually thunderstorms in it. Seems that no one was talking about killer AGW at the time. LOL! Interestingly, that was the beginning of a fairly substantial drought affecting a huge chunk of the US. Right there at the end of the most recent previous negative PDO. I picture sort of a noisy square wave, with lots of harmonic oscillations, overshoots and undershoots throughout the sloppy transition periods. Harmonics fall to lower amplitudes during the flat sections of the “signal.”

Barry B.

Re: #383

Ken, try this site:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1393

This is the only place I know of that provides commentary for the entire U.S. and over the time-frame you require. I don’t know if the information will be specific enough but it would be a good place to start.

If you have certain years that remain in question, post the growing season and crop and I’ll see if I can find some info for you.

DeWitt Payne

#368 jae,

In fact, all of the most sensitive locations have low humidity (below 13 g/m3), suggesting that if there is any water vapor feedback, it is negative.

Low specific humidity equates to lower heat capacity so higher sensitivity should be expected, I think. Desert areas, absent irrigation, also don’t have much moisture available to allow specific humidity to increase much with temperature. Areas with higher humidity and sufficient available water, either open or in the ground, should have lower sensitivity because water has a really large heat of vaporization. The greenhouse forcing from water vapor doubling, say, would only be a few watts/sq.m. and would be lost in the noise of the 100 or so w/sq.m. difference from summer to winter insolation.

DeWitt Payne

I haven’t done any programming in a long time and I’m having some problems setting up to do a finite difference calculation of moist adiabats using equation 3.74 on this page of R. Caballero’s Physical Meteorology notes . I think part of the problem may be that the equations, at least on my computer, are very difficult to read. Any help or references would be greatly appreciated.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #393

Barry B. there is much information in the link you posted and I’ll need time to go through it. I most appreciate your providing it here.

I just wanted to satisfy a personal curiosity on this subject and did not anticipate the project it has become. I know that I could be very mislead by looking at an outlier year and finding a potential cause that was not temperature or precipitation related. If I could get a statewide estimate of the yield effect I could confidently confirm the outlier, but with qualitative commentaries I would need to compare every since year, since I suspect that yield damage not related to temperature and precipitation occurs and is reported every year and it is a matter of degree.

george h.

Business of Global Warming Feels a Lot Like Inquisition
William F. Buckley’s piece here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/business_of_global_warming_fee.html

DeWitt Payne

Mark T.,

Thanks. That confirms what I thought too. R is the gas constant and is always multiplied by temperature so it has to be R*T. Unfortunately, several of those terms are also a function of temperature like l_v the latent heat of vaporization. At least R and g are constants.

Curt

Please tell me this is an April Fools’ joke:

BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – The government of Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070403/62999935.html

Steve Sadlov

RE: #404 – Nope. What I was referring to was much further to the East, in the states I mentioned, and specifically due to a warm front, not a cold front. After that system moved north up into Canada, a series of peristent, massive Highs covered most of the US for months on end. Corn was only knee high at the beginning of September across the entire mid section. A wave of farm failures ensued. As 1974 turned into 1975, the drought spread / shifted West. By early 1976, California was fully engulfed, and what had started out as a normal rainy season in fall of 1975 shut off. Winter of 1976 – 77 featured one of the lowest rainfall amounts in recorded history, at all recording stations, statewide. By 1977, Gov. Brown declared a state of emergency. It was the last blast of the most recent past Negative PDO, which gave droughts just shy of the megadrought category during the 50s and the 70s, affecting large swaths of the US. We were saved by the combination, in late 1977, by a swing to a positive PDO with an El Nino following starting in fall of 1978. A portent of things to come, as GLOBAL COOLING sets in for the next 30 or so years. The AGW fanatics have it all wrong. Global warming does not result in more droughts. Unfortunately, this coming innate cyclical swing into cooling will.

Mark T.

DeWitt, no problem. If you had two mice, you could probably cut and paste the mouse-over text that pops up to get the LaTex. There should be an option to copy it, but I couldn’t figure out how…

Mark

Michael Jankowski

RE403, yes, April Fools’ (junkscience.com briefly mention it as such today).

Richard Sharpe

Note, that is not the actual title of the paper I linked to in my previous post. That title is from this discussion of it.

Michael Jankowski

Am I correct in nothing that elevating CO2 levels are not accounted for when it comes to future yields?

Seeing that the Hadley model results were used here, my thoughts drift back to this from 2000. Both the Hadley and Canadian models seemed to generally agree on the future temp and precip changes in the US, but when they were combined to predict the resulting soil moisture content (“…soil moisture is critical for both agriculture and natural ecosystems…”), what appeared to be minor disagreements between the models become magnified, and the results are drastically different between the two models. And, “…the differences in soil moisture and drought tendencies will be significant for water supply, agriculture, forests, and lake levels…”

Granted, the Canadian model outlook seemed worse than Hadley for the US, but that may not be true globally. But it does help raise the question that the model used here is oversimplistic.

Dave B

Martian Albedo…

interesting article today:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070404/sc_space/duststormsfuelglobalwarmingonmars

what is interesting to me, is that on earth, increased dust is assumed to cause cooling, but on mars, the same effect causes warming.

welikerocks

Hey everyone, have you seen this?
Dust Storms Fuel Global Warming On Mars

“Across the past two decades, the model showed the surface temperature of Mars has increased by about 0.65 degrees Celsius (1.17 degrees Fahrenheit).”

But they come up with dust this time! It’s almost the exact same amount of warming as they say is happening on Earth.

Um, why can’t they ever discuss the sun?

Steve Sadlov

Dynamic link, good only for a day or less:

According to this, a new Greenland – Iceland ice bridge. Very, very late in the season for that!

Alan Woods

Re: 418

Um, why can’t they ever discuss the sun?

Because it’s the elephant in the room.

Curt

Interesting snippet I caught on the radio last week on the University of Texas McDonald Observatory’s “Stardate”:

Quiet Neighbor
One of our closest stellar neighbors is a near twin to the Sun. It’s about the same size, mass, and temperature. It’s a little older, though, and right now, it’s a good bit quieter.

The star is Alpha Centauri A. It’s the brightest member of the triple-star Alpha Centauri system. The system is 4.3 light-years away — closer than any other stars.

Right now, Alpha Centauri A isn’t quite as bright as normal. It’s putting out far less ultraviolet and X-ray energy than average — something that might have happened to the Sun about three centuries ago.

Astronomy satellites have found that last year, the level of X-rays from the star dropped to just about one percent of what it was five years earlier. And its ultraviolet energy dropped to just four percent of what it was.

A star’s energy output varies on a natural cycle. But astronomers from Villanova, who watch Alpha Centauri A and similar stars, say this is the biggest drop ever recorded from a Sun-like star.

The Sun might have experienced a similar drop for several decades around 1700. We don’t know about its X-ray and ultraviolet energy, but we do know that sunspots all but vanished. These magnetic storms are an indication of the Sun’s energy output. During this period, Earth’s temperature dropped by about a degree.

Keeping an eye on Alpha Centauri A and similar stars may help scientists figure out what causes these dropouts — and when the Sun might produce another one.

From http://stardate.org/radio/program.php?f=detail&id=2007-03-30

Ken Fritsch

Re: #421

I finished my first reading of the Schlenker and Roberts paper linked below and have concluded that they are very much interested in making the case for global warming having a very detrimental and unavoidable effect on the major crop yields.

Click to access SchlenkerRoberts.pdf

Their study concentrates on temperatures and sees a relationship much the same as my temperature/precipitation product does with crop yields. They report an increase of yields with increasing temperatures and then a plateau and finally a sharp decrease with temperatures. I saw the plateau and sharp decline with my product indicating that low temperatures were not a limiting factor. I am sure that they have validity in pointing to yields being reduced by the time crops see temperatures over a given threshold, much as indicated in this discussion by Barry B. I do, however, suspect in their rush to show the negative effects of global warming on crop yields that their analysis does not take precipitation sufficiently into account and particularly when its deficiencies are paired with higher temperatures associated with droughts.

They do mention CO2 fertilization, but dismiss accounting for it in their pessimistic prognosis for crop yields by noting the controversy surrounding its effects.

They note that through their analysis they are able to determine that soybean and corn yield genetics have not been changed in the past 50 years to compensate for higher growing temperatures as derived from yields of southern grown crops. I was not able to understand how they came to this conclusion and as a result compared corn and soybean yield trend lines from southern and northern states over the past 44 years. Corn and soybean yields are lower for southern states, but the trend line for corn is somewhat more steeply increasing for southern states than northern ones indicating that temperature effects are not yet limiting. I used those southern states where acreage was increasing or stable as one could conjecture that in states with falling acreage the acreages eliminated where the inherently poorer yielding ones.

Soybeans trend lines were not as steep for most southern states as was seen for northern ones, but what I saw was more recent yields having a significantly larger spread as though affected by diseases. Perhaps Barry B. has some inputs on that matter. For soybean reaction to higher growing temperatures I looked at Brazil and the state Mato Grosso where temperatures are higher than in our southern states. Here soybean yields have been increasing at a steady linear rate and have out-yielded US soybeans over the last 5 years. I have read articles that stated that soybeans varieties have been developed specifically for these tropical climates ‘€” something not noted in the Schlenker paper.

What also puzzled me was that, while the maximum temperatures in the GW scenarios presented in the Schlenker paper would be detrimental to crop yields, by extending the growing season and accommodating earlier planting and maturing of crops could avoid some of the effects of these maximum temperatures. I do not recall a discussion or mention of this by the authors. Perhaps the photosynthetic effects would alter my reasoning here.

I found a paper linked below that took into account the precipitation, temperature, soil moisture content and satellite surveillance of the amount of green the crops showed during the growing season. I would think that the amount of green would be strongly correlated with the other variables measured. These studies where designed to provide crop yield predicting tools from remote sensing during the season to estimate final yields. They discuss the breakpoints associated with predicting yields and the need for using 2 regressions.

http://home.iitk.ac.in/~ramesh/publications_pdf under crop yield IOWA PDF

John Lang

It does look like they are fixing the 2007 ice extent problems in the datasets at Cryosphere (for 2007 anyway, there are still some showing some problems that became evident late in 2006.)

In looking around the archive area, I ran across this interesting paper from 1979 that charts the arctic ice anomalies from 1953 to 1979.

I looks like 1960 was the lowest ice area, nearly 4 million sq kms lower than the average over the period versus the modern record low of about 1.75 million below the 1979-2000 average.

Click to access i1520-0485-9-3-580.pdf

Reid

Let’s get ready to rumble…

“Kerry and Gingrich announce climate showdown”

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/kerry-gingrich-announce-climate-showdown-2007-04-05.html

Former House Speaker and possible presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and 2004 Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) are set to square off on climate change next week, their staffs announced Thursday.

The debate, hosted by New York University’s John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress, will take place next Tuesday, April 10, at 10 a.m. in the Russell Senate Office Building.