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Climate Audit 
726 Comments
Thanks Steve. And my dial-up modem thanks you.
I promise not to read any CO2 sensitivity posts.
Duane Johnson
Steve gets mentioned in a WSJ editorial
The tone of the essay is very good:
# 579
Bill,
I apologize… my English is not good and I took you in the wrong way. What’s the theme here? I got lost with that thing on CO2.
Here is a well reasoned article by S. Fred Singer.
Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural?
“The warming pattern did not match that of El Niño, which the study found typically cools the country slightly:”
“For a final check, the scientists compared the observed 2006 pattern of abnormal surface temperatures to the projected effects of greenhouse-gas warming and El Niño temperature responses. The U.S. temperature pattern of widespread warming was completely inconsistent with the pattern expected from El Niño, but it closely matched the expected effects of greenhouse warming.
When even NOAA scientists attribute recent warming to greenhouse gases, you know its time to take action. Lets see if the media give this important study the same attention they gave to the recent trivial revision in NASAs U.S. land-based temperature data record.”
http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/28/noaa-greenhouse-gases-drove-near-record-us-warmth-in-2006/
THis is amazing. How can their be such a disconnect between skeptics that claim there has been no warming trend for the last 8yrs and NOAA claiming 2006 the warmest. Of course due to GHGs’s
Something’s got to become obvious at some point.
3, Nasif: there is NO THEME HERE. It is really weird how Steve McI hates discussions that dwell on basic sciences. IT IS WRONG.
Steve: As I’ve said many times, I am not interested in people using this blog to expound their hobbyhorses and what you describe as “basic science” falls too often in that category. If people are prepared to closely analyze texts that are supposed to be authoritative, then I’d have more patience. IF people start expounding on “Skeptic” articles, people associate me with these discussions even if I’m not participating. I can’t spend the time dealing with stuff like CO2 measurements so I try to discourage such discussions. Also average temperature. Things like that. I don’t have formal rules, but, jeez, anybody that’s paying attention should be able to figure out the things that I really don’t want to have here as they give a very bad impression to third parties.
Will someone take a moment to explain something to me?
Over at “Open Mind” (don’t let me get started)
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/hemispheres/#more-349
there’s an explanation of sorts on how aerosols cool and CO2 warms. Several pretty graphs showing the cooling from 1940 to 1980, with aerosols the cause. Only in the Northern Hemisphere, mind you; the SH had no aerosols, just CO2, so it warmed continually.
Okay, but, if aerosols cause cooling, and are “local”, and CO2 causes warming, and is everywhere, then why was the NH about 0.1C warmer than the SH in 1940, but is now about 0.2C warmer, after cooling for 40 years?
Am I to believe that CO2 prefers the NH?
When even George Bush says we should not pull out of Iraq, … Oh, yeah, argument by authority.
How can there be climate alarmists who can’t spell? Don’t they know that their messages will be more powerful if spelled correctly?
[snip – because I’ve said that I don’t want to discuss that topic here on many previous occasions. How many times do I have to do this? It’s a big world. You can talk about it elsewhere.]
Re #9 THis is amazing. How can their be such a disconnect between skeptics that claim there has been no warming trend for the last 8yrs and NOAA claiming 2006 the warmest. Of course due to GHGss
c’mon man i spelled it right just used it wrongly.That was not part of the alarmist quote that was me the skeptic.
Sorry for the double post i kept getting an error message.
A new post at NOAA
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2912.htm
Again 1998 has been re-promoted to the hottest in the US.
I do love this “The authors also estimate that there is a 16 percent chance that 2007 will bring record-breaking warmth.” The odds are much higher once Hansen gets his hands on the figures.
AGW cause vegetarianism. According to an article in the LA Times http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/142466.html doubling CO2 will wipe out grasslands-critical for livestock grazing-replacing them with woody shrubs.
Bob
Re #12
Jim B:
It doesn’t matter if 2006 or 1998 or 1934 or 1934 BC was the hottest year in US history. We have it from the worlds foremost authority James Hansen (or was it Prof. Irwin Corey?) that US temperatures don’t matter. They only cover 2% of the earth. We know that we can safely ignore anything that happens in the US except for CO2 emissions.
Steve M, have you ever turned your critical analysis on to Arctic sea ice extent? (A search on the site didn’t turn up anything much.)
Recent reports (e.g. here) show what looks like very strong evidence of unprecedented summer melting, which is hard to reconcile with (a) the apparent flat trend in the Antartic and (b) the doubts sown by much of your other analysis on what’s actually happening to temperature.
#15: Austin, I do not understand your point. Are you saying Antarctica data are wrong or meaningless, that Arctic sea ice extent is wrong or meaningless, or just pointing out the contradiction between the two Poles?
Anyway, I can give you some data on Antarctica and Arctic.
The first, has a cooling trend in recent decades, while its ice pack has a slight increasing trend in the same recent decades: apparently, it is “GW-free”.
The second has seen a sharp and strong rise in temperatures: but, as average, they just reached ’30ies level, not more; and this summer temperatures were higher than historical mean, but not more than other summers. Moreover, the strong melting happened in just a half of the Arctic: imagine it divided, one side NE America, Europe and NW Asia, the other side NW America and NE Asia; the first side, this summer, has a sea ice extent almost normal or just below; the second side, has lost the most part of its usual ice. So, it is probable that Arctic ice melting is influenced also by other factors than temperature, like weather patterns (in that area, this summer was very sunny with weak winds and very few snow) or maybe pollution (e.g. coal/dust emissions which make snow/ice “dirty”) etc.
#5: Jim, the work made by Steve was on GISS and not NOAA data. Anyway, even if I write from Europe, 2006 should have never been the warmest year ever for the USA, which should be 1934 (GISS) or 1998 (NOAA).
Which has little to do with global warming: USA could cool as world warms, and viceversa. So, setting new hot records for the USA, does not mean world is still warming.
But you forget measurement theory: 1934, 1998, 2006 and any other supposed “record year” does not exist; uncertainty range is at least from 0.1°C to 0.2°C, while these “records” are set at hundredths of degree, well below this range; so, since compatibility substitutes equality, they are all compatible each other. And the same apply to world years like 1998, 2002 and 2005.
Anyway, trends are computed not only looking at maximi/minimi of the function, so we could have cooling trends with new records high (e.g. the world warmest year before 1980 was set in the ’50ies, when the planet was actually cooling – of course, just hundredths of degree warmer than previous one, with a 0.2°C error…) and viceversa.
Actually, we could say that after 20 years of sharp warming, since 1998 we entered a “plateau” for world temperatures: they remain high, on the historical tops (at least until Steve will not look at European and Asian stations 😉 ) so well above mean ’80-’90ies level, but they have stopped their rise, while they still do not get down (at least, I do not consider relevant the 0.01°C cooling between 2002 and 2006, from MSU and HadCRUT data): they are almost stable, warming has slowed down, but cooling is still to come (if it will come).
Filippo # 16: Sorry, didn’t mean to be hard to understand. Just
– pointing out the striking difference between the two poles
– wondering how it relates to the validity of temperature records much debated on this site (and to models which IIRC predict AGW warming at both poles)
– wondering further whether this is therefore an area suitable for “auditing” or just for comment from our host.
In any case, thanks for the info in your posting.
OK Austin, I now understand your point 🙂 that is almost mine too.
I can add that Greenland Warming of 1920-1930 and 1995-2005, from Petr Chylek and M.K. Dubey (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and G. Lesins (Dalhousie University, Halifax), published on Geophysical Research Letters, pointed out that:
– ’20ies warming was even faster than recent one, despite covering the same temperature gap;
– all decades from 1915 to 1965 had higher temperatures than present, at least on the southern coasts (the only ones inhabited, now and once);
– total glacial mass is stable if not increasing, with just local melting.
So, despite doom-like scenarios or empty Al Gore’s words, Greenland lived its warmest decades in an era where GHGs were not responsible of Earth’s warming, and unless some coastal glacier we have absolutely no risk of seeing it melting then rising global sea levels by some meter (all things well known, but now we have also an “official” article).
With the Arctic almost entirely surrounded by land, and the Antarctic surrounded by water, they cannot be expected to behave the same. If memory serves GW theory says that high latitude warming will be most evident at the minima, ie winter and night temperatures. Warmer Arctic winter mimima will not melt ice. Decreased cloud cover, reducing precipitation and increasing insolation will eventually reduce snow and ice cover. Glacier surfaces will melt in full sun, even with air temp. just above the snow surface below freezing. Similarly they will remaing frozen under overcast with air temperature just above the surface moderately above freezing. This could be the major mechanism in the Arctic. Increased insolation in the high southern latitudes is more likely to increase evaporation from the ocean surface, and eventually increase precipitation over the Antarctic plateau. Both of these effects seem more consistent with solar induced warming (Svensmark theory), than with CO2 induced warming. Murray
Re 315 My impression is that the Arctic sea ice time series comes from a hodge-podge of methods. Instrumentation and interpretation have changed considerably and apparently the practice is to use a calibration period to graft one technique to another. I suspect it’s a mess.
Having said that, though, I have no problem with the idea that ice extent has shrunk in recent decades. The bigger question is whether the reduction is unusual.
Ice and snow sublimate (turn from solid to gas) at temperatures well below freezing under the influence of sunlight. The geometry of the artic tends to cause an amplification of warming trends see http://www.acia.uaf.edu/PDFs/ACIA_Science_Chapters_Final/ACIA_Ch02_Final.pdf
Good paper, very technical.
Here is some good Terra/Modis satellite images of Arctic from the past 24 hours. It appears to me that the Arctic ice decline has already peaked for the season and is freezing back in many areas.
Beaufort Sea Region. The Cryosphere Today shows the sea ice is 200km to 300km smaller than this Visible image for the Beaufort.
Same image in False color (with Red as ice, easier to see – orange is cloud cover but might contain ice under the cloud.)
Western Arctic where the biggest melt has occured this year. It appears to be refreezing very rapidly here right now.
False color again.
East-side of Greenland. Notice the fractal patterns (particularly in the false-color second link) which appears as the ice is freezing back.
False-color.
I see GISS has already calculated the yearly temperatures for each station for 2007. At least most of the sites. New York Central Park wasn’t calculated. Probably dropping it from their list.
I guess they’re closing up shop for the rest of the year.;-)
I enjoy your blog Steve. Thanks for all the good work.
I notice that you are going methodically continent by continent looking at the warming (or not!) trends. Now up, Antarctica! Which reminds me, one of the other likely climate hoaxes inflicted on the public is the ozone hole. Because 18 years after the Montreal protocol, we had the biggest ozone hole ever:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ozone_record.html
(That information did not get a lot of play in the media, did it? I think in “The Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore in fact claims the ozone hole is fixed.) The ozone hole, supposedly discovered in 1985 by the British Antarctic Survey, lead to the Montreal Protocol in 1987 which was implemented in 1989 (after the “discovery” of the ozone hole in 1985, did we really understand it enough in 2 years to justify taking such drastic action?) Anyway, I think the ozone hole scare/Montreal Protocol is the template that environmental groups are trying to follow because they were so successful in that effort.
The reason I am skeptical of discovery of the hole in 1985, is that it seemed to have been discovered in 1957 by Gordon Dobson (as reported in “Forty Years’ Research on Atmospheric Ozone
at Oxford: a History”, G. M. B. Dobson):
“One of the more interesting results on atmospheric ozone which came out of the IGY was the discovery of the peculiar annual variation of ozone at Halley Bay (Fig. 16).”
“It was clear that the winter vortex over the South Pole was maintained late into the
spring and that this kept the ozone values low.”
Anyway, this is something that could probably use some scrutiny too. Maybe something to think about if CO2/Greenhouses gas stuff get boring.
Re: my #10. Sorry, Steve, I did not realize that discussions of the meaning of “global average temperature” are forbidden. Regardless, I thought Ross McKitrick’s work was sufficiently authoritative.
It seems whatever algorithm they are using to devine yearly temperatures will do it with only seven months of data, and maybe as little as six. I assume the algorithm automatically fills in the year when a certain minimum of data is achieved.
Looking at Brasilia was when I noticed they had yearly temperatures already for 2007. Upon further investigation I found Dec 2006-Nov 2007 has only seven months of data available. In both the raw and combined datasets the month of May has no data, nor does Aug. through Nov. Yet they calculated a yearly figure. How in the world can anyone have confidence in a dataset like that?
RE: #22 and previous sea ice related ….. indeed, according to the Anchorage NWS ice desk, Polar Easterlies have started their inevitable annual reign. As a result, the ice edge is expected to be static for the forseeable future and obviously, with the sun angle approaching the horizon at the pole and very low above 67 N, refreezing should commence shortly. I will add, also, to David Smith’s comments on the record, that I strongly suspect that the passive microwave methods used since the late 70s to “measure” sea ice extent are unreliable and tend to underreport extent during the summer. Beyond that, they are noisy and glitch prone, opening the door for “algorithm abuse” and inverted hockey sticks during the inevitable “processing” that is required to come up with arreal extent numbers or, perhaps, imagined arreal extent numbers.
>> Anyway, this is something that could probably use some scrutiny too. Maybe something to think about if CO2/Greenhouses gas stuff get boring.
Pablo, You completely misunderstand Steve. He is not even interested in C02/Greenhouse gas stuff, let alone previous enviro hoaxes. As TCO pointed out prior to being kicked off the island, he is only interested in scoring points against Mann, et al, and Hansen, et al.
I guess he’s not strong enough to withstand the logic fallacy criticism “you must be wrong, since there are people on your blog that discuss C02”.
Sorry, I misunderstood. Anyway, I still think there is some poor science (or deception?) in the ozone hole/depletion issue too.
Published today:
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-29198620070828?feedType=RSS&rpc=602
Antarctic ozone hole appears early in 2007 – U.N.
“Although ozone-depleting substances are now declining slowly, there is no sign that the Antarctic ozone hole is getting smaller,”
Huh? I thought that was all settled science. The Montreal Protocol was to solve the ozone hole issue. After all, there was a consensus.
Ok, that’s all for this topic.
Gunnar,
This site belongs to Steve. It is his hard earned time, effort, and money that go into operating it and paying for the bandwidth. If he is held accountable for the content of it by those outside of the blogosphere and if others use the content of his blog to judge his motivations and cast doubt on the overall quality of his work, then he is well within his rights to ask (and he has done so politely and repeatedly) that certain topics be discussed elsewhere. The obvious alternative is to start doing what RealClimate does and just ban posters, delete any comments that they disagree with, and strictly control what gets posted. Steve obviously doesn’t have the time or the interest in running this site that way. So he has asked us to act like adults, to respect his requests, and to police ourselves with regard to what we do and don’t discuss on HIS blog. Why is that such a burden to you to try to abide by? It seems like a very simple request that he is within his rights to make.
>> poor science (or deception?)
Agreed.
>> to respect his requests
Bill, I think there is more to it than the conventional explanation that you describe.
1) my understanding was that it was ok in Unthreaded. But now, the whole Untreaded 18 has been deleted. 2) the reason you describe ( held accountable for the content of it by those ), is an argument by logic fallacy. There is no end to such fallacies, so he cannot defend himself against that kind of argument. 3) I’m familiar with the technology, and the incremental bandwidth from C02 discussion is not a valid argument. 5) the threads are filled with non PC comments that could be fallaciously used against him. He doesn’t bother with all of those, so there is more to it. 6) He’s retired, so why does he care what fallacious arguments someone makes, unless he has an agenda after all, contrary to what he claims.
What is the pattern? I believe he specifically doesn’t want any discussion that makes the point too clearly that everything that he is doing is irrelevant.
>> ban posters, delete any comments that they disagree with, and strictly control what gets posted.
Maybe you don’t realize that this is exactly what Steve does.
Gunnar, you clearly have a negative opinion of Steve you are trying to push. I have said my piece about disrespecting Steve’s requests, and I am not going to fill up any more space on this thread with nonsense arguments over what Steve’s motives are. I don’t think he owes you, me, or anybody else an explanation of why he does anything he wants on this blog. He has done an amazing job here trying to foster a purely scientific discussion without the name calling, condescension, and otherwise juvenile conduct found on any of the other dozens of blogs out there. If he wants to put limits on what is discussed, it is neither my place nor anybody elses to complain about the reasons why. It is HIS site…if you don’t like his requests, blogspot lets you set up a blog for free…jump in and have at it.
Unthreaded 18 is not deleted.
Bill F has expressed my sentiments exactly. I don’t have the time or energy to baby-sit every comment, but there is a certain amount of editorial control that I wish to exercise.
Whatever others may think, it’s not my intention to have a traditional “skeptic” blog. I’m interested in trying to get firm control of the basics and working from there. That’s what this blog is about. If the results ultimately confirm conventional views, so be it but we’ll see how one gets there brick by brick. Quite possibly it’s “irrelevant”. I’ve compared what I do to doing crossword puzzles. I’m not worried about whether it’s “relevant”. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t be. But I want readers to take away an impression that care is being taken with details with the topics that are under discussion.
Maybe I’ll get to the things that interest you; maybe I won’t. If you think that something else is more important, so be it. At this point, I’m not interested in hosting discussions on CO2 measurement, global average temperature, thermodynamics, why CO2 forcing is supposedly impossible and a few other topics of that ilk. It’s a big world and a big internet and lots of places to discuss other things.
>> you clearly have a negative opinion of Steve you are trying to push
No, I don’t.
>> I dont think he owes you, me, or anybody else an explanation of why he does anything he wants on this blog
I just pointed out that his explanation doesn’t make sense, and then you say “he doesn’t owe us an explanation”. Then why provide one that doesn’t make sense?
>> to foster a purely scientific discussion
Actually, it’s a purely mathematical discussion
>> condescension, and otherwise juvenile conduct
Except for the condescension against non mathematical discussion, and the juvenile deleting of posts.
>> Unthreaded 18 is not deleted
Sorry, couldn’t find it in the archive
>> Im not interested in hosting discussions on
But people can claim false things about AGW science all day long.
I’m sure Steve doesn’t want you guys talking about ozone either. Simple chemistry. And by all accounts it’ll be many decades before the hole will recover.
Of course, the CO2 cooling effect on the stratosphere isn’t helping things.
>> Im sure Steve doesnt want you guys talking about ozone either. Simple chemistry. And by all accounts itll be many decades before the hole will recover. Of course, the CO2 cooling effect on the stratosphere isnt helping things.
Example of post that discusses / makes claims about Ozone. To be consistent, steve should snip this.
Chemistry yes,
Simple, not by any stretch of the imagination.
# 35
Boris,
Is there a hole in the stratosphere? I thought it was a depletion of the ozone layer, not a hole… 😉
The stratosphere is clearly a doughnut. Think of ozone as sprinkles. CFCs eat sprinkles.
A doughnut… Well, I want the hole, just where the CFC from Mount Eruba won’t eat sprinkles. 🙂
This blog is about climate auditing. You know, the people that tell us what the climate is doing and verifying the methods they used to do it, GISS and related folks. Notice the categories and pages and links and stuff on the left side of the page. Some great resources related to climate auditing. 🙂
I would think mentioning, ok, discussing, not ok. You know the detailed minutia. So here’s the resourcees, no need to discuss anything. And guess what? It makes Steve’s motives immaterial, we don’t have to discuss that any more either! Yay! Yay! Hip hip hooray!
Here, I knew it was all someplace close:
http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov/science/basics.htm
http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/SEES/ozone/oz_class.htm
http://ozone.unep.org/Public_Information/4Aii_PublicInfo_Facts_OzoneLayer.shtml
Speaking of climate auditing, Steve, a couple of topics had one of the grids was 27.5N 117.5E so if they’re going down and to the right, the other corner is at 22.5N 122.5E, is that correct? (If so, that’s an area of about 280,500 km, although I’m using the distance between the points and then the calculation for a square (Stupid diagonal lines and trapezoids) to get it, so it’s approximate, rather than getting the length of all four lines….
One thing I am confused as to why the .5 fractions above, I would think grid 1 would be something like 0N 0E to 5S 5E (or to 2S 2E in this case, since it’s all water in the Gulf of Guinea)
Anyway, I wanted to print out some squares and take a look at some of the stations in the sector I was looking at. Does GISS or somebody already have something like that someplaces already , or do you use a mapping program? Somebody must have it to figure out the grids. Thanks.
John Brignell just put up a good item about Hansen and Steve at his site.
It’s at the bottom of this page.
#41 should be snipped
What, I’m auditing areas of the Earth.
RP Sr has a blog too you know, well, at least for a while. He just brought up one of these subjects’s here:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/29/more-on-another-climate-forcing-effect-ozone/
For those with different tastes, this is probably an excellent resource:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/category/climate-change-forcings-and-feedbacks/
And if you get really desparate, there is always RC. 😀 (Link’s in the sidebar)
#42, Bob, there was also an interesting tidbit on el nino over there at numberwatch, on that same page.
Hey quick off topic question, paleoclimatology is it a real science, or for that matter a real word?
I wikipediaed (
I am afraid I am going to sound like a broken record, but why are the precipitation records truncated at 1995 (GISS) and 2000 (CRUT). Doesn’t everybody agree that Global Warming will lead to greater evaporation and in turn greater precipitation? Isn’t this an unambiguous signal that is less subject to error and the need for adjustments than surface temperatures? If so, where is the data? I have posed the same question at Real Climate and have received no replies? The UK precipitation data clearly shows that since 1766 thru 2006 there has been no increase in precipitation in the UK. If global warming is significant, how can this be? Surely Professor Henry Higgins was not making a global prediction!
Hey quick off topic question, paleoclimatology is it a real science, or for that matter a real word?
I wikipediaed (not a real word) the word paleoclimatology it tell what it is but not when the science started, who coined the term the first degrees who got first degrees, is there a degree in it?
While you’re at it, how about “Dendroclimatology”
http://www.geo.vu.nl/onderwijs/roo/mas-palpalpal-12.pdf – degrees yes
Gunnar:
Will your blog be up and running any time soon??
>> Will your blog be up and running any time soon??
It’s coming along. I have the schema mostly designed, and I have some user interface working:
http://www.critical-thinker.org/DiscussionBlog.aspx
I have some more to go. As software folks are prone to say: real soon now.
Look, Gunnar has obviously gone too far here, but Steve McI is creating a lot of confusion by banning certain discussions, evidently ad hoc. Steve McI, maybe it would be useful to put up a sidebar labeled “Unwelcome Topics,” to help us (and especially the newbies to the site) sort out the mixed messages and inconsistencies that are evident in your proclamations of what is accepted and what is not. And please define “authoritative source” while you are at it.
# 51
Jae,
Are authoritative scientific magazines, like Nature, Science, etc., biased? 😉
Not So Hot
http://tinyurl.com/24gqcz
WSJ
Alaska global warming trip pairs evangelicals, scientists
http://tinyurl.com/23ru79
Gunnar
If you don’t mind me jumping in, I see you are running your blog in asp .NET. Is there a particular reason for this, are you using some kind of content management system or building it by hand? I might be able to make some suggestions. I built http://www.surfacestations.ca/ in less than a day.
Please don’t use frames every time a web site uses frames a Linux penguin explodes. 😦
>> your blog in asp .NET. Is there a particular reason for this,
Yes, I like asp.net.
>> are you using some kind of content management system or building it by hand?
For various reasons, I’m designing and implementing my own.
>> some suggestions … in less than a day
Over the last couple of years, I’ve thought of a lot of blog features that I would want, but I’m happy to hear your suggestions.
>> Please dont use frames
I’m not aware that I am.
Lurking on JS for some minutes…Mark Serreze Boulder:
NW passage open…it’s unprecedented…Take a ship from
Tokyo to Boston…not a sunday cruise, Lionel Hache
Environment Canada says you could sail the NW passage
it’s ice-free…(Province on-line Aug 29 2007)…Steve
Sadlov…isn’t Mark Serreze one of the “usual suspects”??
Lionel Hache(=”axe”)…In Swedish colloquial or slang
“en yxa” could mean nutcase…Quite a coincidence…
And we’ve got arctic cold here!! I called the Jönköping
police district (Province of Smaaland) 300 km SW of
Stockholm to hear if freezing rainshowers had caused
any road accidents..Well one person had ended in a ditch,
but slippery road was not confirmed… If you enter
the SMHI website and look at the radar sequnces LEFT
COLUMN “Land”, then “Extremer” Min Temp +1.5C ca in this
area although some light showers passing “Radarobservationer”
is second from bottom…What
we know from “Heatwavesummer of 2003″ is that freezing
showers about 21:00 local time on Aug 31 almost caused
lethal accidents just 10 miles SW of Stockholm, yes
the Swedish capital…and that was not some 250-350 m
ASL perhaps 25….But today Aug 30 2007,”iron ore” city
of Kiruna had
a thin layer snow this morning…Still weather not
climate, well not much climate anyhow…
Staffan (#56)
I hahve already asked Gunnar and Hasse about this, but I am trying to obtain Nordklim data that is more recent than the series that runs through 2000 (except for Finland – 12/31/2002). The regional models reported on Real Climate suggest that rainfall in Norway will increase dramatically and I was hoping to see whether those predictions held true for the last 7 years or so. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Staffan, Gunnar and Hasse:
I got a response from rasmus on Real Climate, he says that the data is available on the Norwegian national weather site here. Alas it is Norwegian. Can anyone point to which link provides the data?
#58
You need to open an account to access the data. “Opprett konto”
Once you log on its all fairly clear.
Try this page translation
Skip #60
Norwegian to English translator is here just paste the webpage address there.
#58
It’s a bit complicated as the entire service, help included is in Norwegian. There is a log on field to the top left – you have to create an account (free of charge)by clicking “Opprett bruker” and then log on – and then go on selecting which data from where and in which format and so on. Maybe there’s a way to do it automatically like Steve Mc. has done from other sites – but that is beyond me.
I (or any other norwegian speaking) could try to obtain the data you need and e-mail you the file.
Hmm. Is lapse rate considered in calculating average temperatures? If there are many high eleevation stations in a given grid, one would get a negative temperature bias to the average, and a positive temperature bias for a preponderance of low-elevation stations. How is this problem resolved?
EW and Steve:
Many thanks. I have registered. My Norwegian vocabulary has expanded infinitely from 0 to 7 words!! I will let you know how I do. They have a really cool map of all the weather stations, pity it is not interactive. I am still puzzled at why the GISS and CRUT data is so truncated.
RE: #56 – I challenge anyone to get through to the Davis Strait, or, even more bold, to get past the north of Greenland right now. As I have said before, so long as it’s your boat, go for it man!
RE: #63 – Lapse rate can be a funny thing, especially in the SW US. First, operational definition. The standard definition is CA,NV,AZ,UT,NM. I would probably exclude CA north of about 39 or 40, perhaps as far south as 37.5 (it’s a bit of a grey area, some years, we in the upper 30s N go with the NW, some years, maybe a slight majority, with the SW). I digress. Right now is a classic case. We are experiencing one of those typical fall (“Indian Summer”) triple barrel Highs. As a result, there is really outstanding compression all the way out to sea (whereas, normally, there would only be this sort of extreme compression in the true far inland desert areas). I live near 1000 feet above MSL. When the marine layer is robust, I am in it and the air spilling inland keeps things cool. If I were to go up, at some point, I’d get to the top of the marine layer where there would be an extreme inversion. Below it, 58 degree air,above it, 95 degree air. Well, right now, that inversion is compressed down to sea level. As a result, only at the beaches is it not hot today. Some other fall days, the inversion will be just below where I am at and I can walk down into the cooler marine air. Here is a prosal for a study. Crunch radiosonde records for the GISS and other grids. I’d slice it two ways. On any given day, what is the distribution of thermal profiles. Then, I’d also average the thermal profile of each site over the reporting period and stack up all those average profiles next to each other. This would be a grueling, data intensive effort. But imagine its fruits.
#47 >> Doesnt everybody agree that Global Warming will lead to greater evaporation and in turn greater precipitation? Isnt this an unambiguous signal that is less subject to error and the need for adjustments than surface temperatures?
bernie, This is a complicated issue. First of all, aren’t we trying to distinguish between GW and AGW? I’m not sure if AGWers would agree that AGW causes more precipitation, since that would be admitting a big negative feedback. If I understand AGW correctly, and chances are I don’t, it would be preventing some amount of heat from escaping at night. So, whereas increased solar energy would increase daytime highs, and would presumably increase evaporation and precipitation, I wonder if AGW would increase night time lows, and thus not affect precipitation.
In addition, I hardly think that we have a handle on global precipitation records. I know you are trying to get the norwegian records, but as I’ve already told you, my cousin’s presence greatly affects that. But seriouslym, how do you plan to get the records for the vast ocean areas?
Regarding the “Unmentionable Subjects” as dictated by Steve McIntyre.
I extend an invitation to any who wish to discuss these to do so on the http://www.jref.org forum in science and technology. Image hosting is supported and image/attachments work. Seems to me like 50 postings is required then they will host 75 images for you. Climate is of course only one part of this system which is more generally related to “debunking” and skepticism. There may be a better place for the fairly high level discussions that have been seen here. Nonetheless, here is the link. A simple registration is required. There is no junk email spam or other annoyances.
http://forums.randi.org/
Mike
With the classic fall (that’s right, fall) weather we are having on the West Coast of the US (e.g. typically, fall here features a break down of the persistent onshore, zonal flows and we get some offshore, interspersed with the last and intense blast of monsoonal moisture in the S and the precursor Gulf of Alaska storms in the N) I now turn my gaze toward the approaching winter. Think about this. If the NH experiences what the SH has experienced this year, we will be in a world of hurt.
#67
Rather than idly thinking
you could try checking the SPM
“Long-term trends from 1900 to 2005 have been observed in precipitation amount over many large regions”
Or the recent literature
Zhang et al. 2007 Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends. Nature
#70,
RichardT, I’m confused. The quote seems to indicate what is actually happening, and presumably the Nature article does as well. How is that related to what “AGWers would agree” is predicted by the AGW idea?
Re: #63, #66
Another potential source of error in a five degree square grid of mean temperatures due to invalid nominal lapse rate assumptions can be found when observation stations subject to adiabatic heating and cooling during events such as Santa Ana winds are used to adjust the raw air temperature observatiosn of stations not subject to such winds.
Increased air temperatures of 10C/29F per kilometer can result as the cold air descends from the observation stations located at higher elevations to the observation stations located at the lower elevations. See the discussion of Santa Ana winds at the following Website and note the many ways in which averaging the air temperatures of observation stations in a grid that are subject to such dissimilar conditions can introduce bias and errors into the mean value for the grid.
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~fovell/ASother/mm5/SantaAna/winds.html
When reviewing such air temperature datasets for potential adjustment errors, some of the questions a reviewer may need to ask may be:
How many of the reporting stations used to determine an adjustment value were and were not subject to Santa Ana wind conditions, other meterological events which introduce actual changes to lapse rates in air temperatures, and other events? Where are the adjustment records which document such errors have not incorrectly influenced the adjustments?
If the adjustments took into consideration such meteorological events, were the quantitative values correctly determined and applied to the adjustments? If so, what were the quantitative values and where are the adjustment records documenting such evaluations?
#71
Yes, increased precipitation is expected. The abstract from Zhang et al.
“Human influence on climate has been detected in surface air temperature sea level pressure, free atmospheric temperature, tropopause height and ocean heat content. Human-induced changes have not, however, previously been detected in precipitation at the global scale, partly because changes in precipitation in different regions cancel each other out and thereby reduce the strength of the global average signal. Models suggest that anthropogenic forcing should have caused a small increase in global mean precipitation and a latitudinal redistribution of precipitation, increasing precipitation at high latitudes, decreasing precipitation at sub-tropical latitudes, and possibly changing the distribution of precipitation within the tropics by shifting the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Here we compare observed changes in land precipitation during the twentieth century averaged over latitudinal bands with changes simulated by fourteen climate models. We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands, and that these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing. We estimate that anthropogenic forcing contributed significantly to observed increases in precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, drying in the Northern Hemisphere subtropics and tropics, and moistening in the Southern Hemisphere subtropics and deep tropics. The observed changes, which are larger than estimated from model simulations, may have already had significant effects on ecosystems, agriculture and human health in regions that are sensitive to changes in precipitation, such as the Sahel.”
Yup…
Mark
RE: #72 – the impact of Santa Anas can be a the microclimate level. If you are at the mouth of a canyon or near a gap in the hills / mountains, Santa Anas will blow whenever synoptic conditions are right. Just a mile or two away, there may be enough of a blockage to make Santa Anas a much rarer event. Good point ….
RE: #73 – Yes, this is one of the sources of the “poor countries hit by drought” shiboleth of the AGW fanatic crowd. Of course, they’ve got some splainin to do about the actual precip trend in the Sahel.
#73,
Yes, Richard, but what is the scientific hypothesis?
Or are you claiming that “Models suggest that anthropogenic forcing” is equivalent to an hypothesis?
I think he’s claiming that it’s the equivalent to a theory.
And when two models “suggest” the same thing, then the theory is proven.
It seems that withholding data from federally funded research is not limited to climate research. From the 8/30/07 WSJ op-ed The War on (Expensive) Drugs by Scott Gottlieb:
This looks like a golden opportunity to get a letter to the editor published about withholding data in climate research.
That settles that.
Well, I guess we’ll have to try checking the SPM closer, because that statement doesn’t say which direction these long-term trends are. If you’re making a point about AGW causing increases in precipitation, then it would help to point to a disambiguous quote.
Hmmm, I thought the “fingerprint” of AGW was all over the changing climate, yet “Human-induced changes have not, however, previously been detected in precipitation at the global scale.” Interesting.
It’s also interesting that “…The observed changes, which are larger than estimated from model simulations…” is somehow acceptable, but when observed changes are larger than model simulations using natural forcing alone, it is used to descredit the idea that nature is the cause. Sounds like a double-standard to me.
Because of lapse rate considerations (and other considerations), shouldn’t the anomalies be produced for each site and then these anomalies averaged over the grid? I don’t think this is the way it is done??
#81
I had assumed that those who comment here would have the SPM to check. Perhaps I was wrong. For those who have bothered downloading it yet, the next sentences are
“Significantly increased precipitation has been observed in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia. Drying has been observed in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia.”
Re #83
I thought sattelite measurements were showing the Sahel greening? Anyone know how this jibes with drying?
This is just a quick advert for a discussion I am continuing over on p=1805 (on IPCC Test, Durbin-Watson, Juckes, etc.).
Sahel is actually recovering from drought, and from many years.
Saying that Sahel drought was due (we are speaking about ’70ies-’80ies!!!) to global warming is simply a deliberate false, or I would say it is made by incompetent people (they can choose…).
That long drought was:
1) mainly happened still in the global cooling era;
2) anyway caused by a cycle in weather patterns, like the ones linked to NAO and ITCZ, which caused cooler weather during European/Mediterranean summers of ’70ies-’80ies, forcing North African anticyclone to stay souther then covering Sahel during rainy season: we can easily prove this: drought ended at least 10-12 years ago, when European/Mediterranean summers begin to get hotter and North African anticyclone to settle norther – e.g. 2003 – but this is too linked to weather patterns more than global warming, since such activity of African high pressure was the obvious response to cold arctic fronts hitting south in open Atlantic during summer – once more 2003.
For the Mediterranean. There was a decrease in both rainfalls and rainy days during the ’90ies (still due, as above, to cyclical patterns like NAO): but e.g. South Italy lived dry years from mid ’90ies until 2001, then since 2002 (with a very wet summer, exceptionally wet in our South) no drought happened (remember that dry summers are usual in South Italy, so I do not consider them as droughts – and remember that North Italy climate is quite different from South Italy, not to mention almost any other thing…). So I think it should be better to wait and analise rather than getting immediate conclusion that could prove wrong in a few years: Spain and Portugal had a very hard drought during 2004 and 2005, but since 2006 they are getting many rainy fronts (even during usually dry summers).
Moreover, from what I know, no Mediterranean country is now risking desertification due to droughts: maybe in someone of the doom future scenarios (so, I like more reading sciencefiction…); but now, in the real world, we have already vaste semi-arid lands (some counties of Spain, some Greek island, part of North Africa) or arid ones (Sahara) since centuries if not millennia, while there are actually regions at high desertification risk, like Sicily, but because of wrong soil utilisation and not at all because of water lack (the same Sicily, since 2002, had no water shortage – I mean out of their old, broken and mafia-controlled aqueducts – and its rainfalls are well above desertification or even semi-arid level).
81, 83:
I’ve noticed various parts of the IPCC summaries and articles repeat themselves sometimes. While some parts are exceedingly vague or fraught with qualifiers, sometimes they repeat it more clearly. (And other repetitions are simply vague or fraught with qualifiers in a different direction.) Significantly increased means what? Which eastern parts? How much? When? Drying, what kind of drying? Which parts of those places are drying?
They go into more detail later on the specifics, but I consider most of the wiggle language in the summaries worthless. The detail is of course not read by many at all, as well as being buried in language style and volume that makes it difficult to find anything, even for those taking the time to read anything more than the summary.
I wonder if it’s set up like that on purpose or not.
I was looking around at the locations of weather stations in Missouri (my birth state) and eventually got around to KC International Airport. You can see the station here on Live.
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=39.297425~-94.730713&style=a&lvl=19&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=14988800&encType=1
Hope that link works. If you zoom out you’ll see a darkening of the ground in the vicinity of the runways. Possible causes:
-blending of image sets (an illusion)
-soot from jet exhaust
-tire rubber
-drying of vegetation from exhaust
-effects on vegetation from de-icing or other chemicals
-some combination of the above
-or something I haven’t thought of
Assuming for the moment that the darkening is real, it makes sense to me that this darkening may affect local temperature measurements. It also seems likely that this effect changes over time (accumulates) and varies with the seasons (snow cover, spring growth of new grass). In my mind this is another potential for difficulty with measurements around airports in addition to the other issues I’ve heard discussed.
My apologies if this has been covered or is already well known.
Re #83
RichardT,
Thanks for the helpful quote:
Now we know with certainty that:
Idle speculation be damned!
Those of us that comment here also assumed you would deem the SPM some sort of “scientific” document… we were not let down.
Mark
Climate change could be causing cougar attacks: expert
I love this article.
First paragraph : CANMORE, Alta. — A combination of warm winters and Alberta’s population boom is causing a recent jump in cougar attacks, says a spokesman for the government agency that collects cougar-related data.
And yet in the fifth paragraph:
No humans have been mauled by cougars in Alberta since 2005…
You know it’s funny how the alarmist have set-up these win-win scenarios. It’s a bad thing when animals’ population goes down due to climate change but then when an animal’s population goes up due to climate change–in this case, the warmer winters have led to increases in elk and deer population, thus increasing the cougar population–it’s a bad thing as well. The only animals whose numbers are increasing from ACC are ones which we as humans should fear. Mosquitoes…cougars…what next?
I cannot post here, it seems I have problems with my browser.
Doug Mitchell,
And climate change could cause the chupacabras also increases its attacks on goats and chickens… 😉
Re: #91
They got a two’fer one with the news story claiming climate change due to global warming and the Bush War on Terror was dramatically increasing the number of cases of the flesheating disease. It commented on the warmer temperatures increasing the flea population etc. that were carriers of the dreaded disease, and the large numbers of soldiers exposed to the threat increased the incidence of the disease. Then….
#Bernie: If you need some help translating some Norwegian words into english in order to navigate the data. E-mail me at oxosis@hotmail.com
#All: Here is a laugh for anyone who understands norwegian 🙂
In light of resent years it’s hilarious. It’s basically about a guy who want’s to see the guy in the radio who constantly is saying the phrase “against normal” regarding various weather events.
One of my favorite quotes is.
“There are unormal events in this world ,without this guy making it worse than it is”
RE: #91 – When I was a kid, there was still a massive deer hunt, a reasonable a mount of huntable land, and even a limited moutain lion hunt. Over the ensuing years, the deer hunt was vastly scaled back, areas where hunting is allowed limited to the most remote areas of Cali and mountain lion hunting banned. Now, I’ve got antlered rats crawling all over the place where I live, which also happens to be an area with no deer hunt. Many idiots who live around here leave food out for Stellers Jays (and unwittingly, this also feeds the squirrels, deer, racoons, opossoms, etc). And now, the mountain lions are becoming more and more bold. Bad stuff will start happening soon. And it all could have been prevented. [snikik …. blam!] …. 😉
Hasse:
Thanks for the offer, I will find out tomorrow if I can log on to the site.
# 95
D. Patterson, then… I remember those bubonic pest epidemics in XV-XIX centuries. Could those invasions of rat fleas be due to AGW? 😉 Statistically, we are in fleas-humans peace indentation.
Re: #98
Look on the bright side. If the current leadership of climate science in government needs to expand their workforce, there are plenty of low-paid journalists and journalism students qualified for recruitment at the current standards and salaries of the profession.
Re: #99
Heck, why journalism students? The formula is easy. Classify any major weather event as “unusual” and the result of AGW. Take those who disagree and say their pockets are lined with money from Big Oil. Go on TV, repeat ad nauseam, profit.
Re#96, Steve Sadlov:
Despite GW (both Global warming and George W), US deer population exploded from 500 thousand in first quarter of 20 century to current 30 millions. Some suburban areas are experiencing deer population densities as high as 30-40 animals (occasionally reaching 100 or more) per square mile (ecosystems begin to degrade when counts rise above 15-20 deer per square mile). 11 millions of active US big game hunters, bagging no less than 5 millions of white tail deer annually, and half million deer killed yearly in car collisions, are not able to control this ravaging overpopulation, including 1.4 millions deer in Pennsylvania alone. NA population of black bears is about 600 thousand (20 thousand hunted annually), and 60 thousand grizzly bears (also hunted, including by daredevils with bow and arrows).
We live here in a frigging zoo, which should be obvious to anyone ever been outside, outside Manhattan and Hollywood that is.
Too bad all this wildlife will be doomed in a six and a half years. Damn GW.
Has there ever been a scientific research conducted about the impact on climate from atmospheric nuclear tests between the 40’s and 60’s?
Last night, Fox News, Brit Hume asked:
“How Many Scientists Say That Mankind Is Affecting Global Warming?”
read the rest here
Interesting!
#102: years ago, I read that they were blamed for “global dimming” then “global cooling” of that era, but now just pollution is blamed for this, just to counter-balance the fact that CO2 was rising in that period…of course, no mention that inner cycles of Earth and Sun’s activity/incoming energy agree very well with that short cooling period, dimming or not dimming.
To pass once more from climate to weather: next week, a deep Arctic cold front should hit Central and East Europe, down to Mediterranean (South Italy and Balkans), with a strong Azores high pressure climbing from the Ocean over UK and almost to Scandinavia.
While such weather would not be unusual during winter, it is very unusual in such period: we should have still mild to warm temperatures, enough to make winegrapes ripen to make wine; but we now have to expect widespread night lows well below +10°C if not +5°C, and day highs not more than +20°C, from Germany to Serbia, North Italy to Romania, with even a frost risk for South Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary (where sea is far, and lower temperatures should hit) and which could be an irreversible damage to plants like vineyards, not to mention snow down to 1000-1500m in the Alps. Of course, just for some day, maybe no more than 4-5 days: but, it would be a mid-late October weather, led by a January-like pressure configuration, in early September.
I hope BBC or others would not blame GW for this…
Global cooling would also increase precipitation as a lower “global” temperature would be required to match heat input with heat output.
Because the earth atmosphere is a heat pipe. Not a greenhouse.
Hi,
I am a newbie to all of this and hope that I am posting this in the right place….!
Until 2 months ago I was your average Joe that thought that the world was getting warmer and that in a few years time it would take me far less time to drive to the beach.
What changed all that was reading MC’s “State of Fear”. I fully acknowledge that it is a work of fiction (although supposedly based on facts). It never the less got me thinking and I decided to do some of my own research…..which has finally led me here today, looking for some straight forward answers to some hopefully straight forward questions. I hope these questions are answered without you all thinking I am a dithering idiot! I have asked the same questions on some other sites and received responses ranging from quotes from the bible to responses such as “Are you f****** THICK?”. You can guess the sites that I went to! (And there I thought that the majority of people looking into GW were upstanding scientists – how wrong I am!).
Anyway, following are my questions. If possible I would like a simple reply with a link to verified scientific findings (yes, I know I am asking alot – I am just getting so confused with everyone saying that their findings are the correct ones without actually providing proof.)
1. Are the ice-caps melting more than what they “should” do?
2. Is the sea level rising?
3. Is there more or less terrestial rainfall than “normal”?
Thank you. I will have many more questions in the future. Should I rather post them elsewhere please be kind enough to point me in the right direction.
Regards.
David W.,
Yes. The sea levels are rising. Latest best estimate IIRC is 1.35 mm/yr. I usually call it 1.5 mm/yr.
Which is less than 6″ a century. I don’t have a link. However, if you use the blog search feature you can probably find it. It was posted here, not by me.
103:
This is looking to be another Benny Peiser type embarrassment.
#104: This is what I found in the March 1998 Science and Technology:
“For climate modelers, data on 14C distributions took on additional usefulness as a result of the atmospheric nuclear tests conducted mostly in the period from 1954 through 1963. The concentration of 14C in atmospheric CO2, which had remained fairly constant for the previous thousand years, was doubled by those nuclear tests in less than 10 years. Since the end of the tests, 14C concentrations have been decreasing as atmospheric CO2 moves into other carbon reservoirs. This infiltration of nuclear-testing 14C into carbon reservoirs can provide valuable information on carbon exchange. In particular, if the rate of nuclear-testing 14C transfer from the atmosphere to the oceans and land could be accurately predicted, climate scientists would be able to predict the rate at which the oceans and land absorb human-induced CO2 because essentially the same physical rules govern the transfer processes. Thus, understanding 14C transfer is another route to determining rates of future greenhouse warming.
Models to simulate this transfer process make use of the estimated amounts of 14C created by nuclear tests; they also make use of nuclear-testing 14C data that were actually measured in the troposphere and stratosphere. If the models are accurate, the total amount of nuclear-testing 14C transferred to the oceans, land, troposphere, and stratosphere should equal the estimated inventory of nuclear-testing 14C, and the amounts transferred to the troposphere and stratosphere should approximate the measured data.”
More here: http://www.llnl.gov/str/Duffy.html
BTW In South Sweden is currently expecting temperatures below 0C, never happen before in history, it appears.
A propos Jim “Incandescent Lightbulb Upstairs” Hansen I’m looking for that email quote I think I saw here the other week where Hansen tells us to scram statistics and weather data and anomalies and just trust our feelings — everyone “knows” and “feels” it’s been getting warmer anyhow, just ask your perspiring neighbor…
I believe someone here at climateaudit concluded that Hansen now finally had thrown in the towel and confessed that AGW is all about believing and feeling and nothing else… Bet that Hansen’s Y2K trauma of late finally put out the (incandescent?) lightbulb on his 2nd floor.
Can’t seem to be able to locate that email quote and reader response again via any search engine — please help me cause I was planning to use that wonderful quote in some context or other.
Thanks Steve for all the great things you’re doing to exponentially improve our critical understanding of the records of “glocal temperature(s)”, record or otherwise…
Re#83,
You have once again failed to provide a reference claiming a demonstrated link between global temperature increases and global precipitation increases. The best the supplied quotes can do is suggest that global temperature increases can cause increases in precipitation in some regions and decreases in others. And as the other abstract you posted shows, the global affect on precipitation to date has been zilch.
And surely you realize there are many factors that can impact regional precipitation trends?
#106: I try to give you some answer David:
1- land glaciers in many areas are reducing, but at the same rate or even below of previous but recent glacial retreat (e.g. Alps or coastal Greenland, glaciers retreating as or a little slower they did e.g. between 1920 and 1950) while others are even advancing (e.g. New Zealand) and other ones have not a clear trend (someone advancing, someone retreating, as in South America or on the Antarctic coast); but the whole world land glacial mass is increasing since it is 70-80% concentrated in inner Greenland and above all in inner Antarctica: in the first, because of increased snowfalls with temperatures still very low (Greenland, anyway, has still to reach ’20-’30ies heat peaks), and in the second because of downward temperature trends since at least 1979 (despite what Al Gore may invent in his poor sciencefiction).
For sea ice, we have a clear downward trend for the Arctic pack, above all during summer (instead, during winter ice loss is much less important) where we reached in 2005 then this year new minimi since at least 1979, losing up to 30-40% of frozen surface during August-September (but quantifying it precisely is less easy than you can think).
Instead, Antarctic ice sheet is stable to slightly increasing (5-10%) both during summer and winter.
So, you can find much ice that is not melting at all despite alarmist claims; and the Arctic sea ice that, during summer, is losing area fast, even more than predicted by someone, but just this (not so little, I know) and just on a few years trend.
2- Yes, but very slowly, as written by Simon (#107); surely not enough to submerge isles, for now and for long decades.
Remember anyway that, at the dawn of human civilisation (5,000-6,000 years ago) sea levels were very likely about 1-2m above current levels, and probably during Middle Ages too they were probably 0.5-1m higher, at least in Europe.
3- Impossible to say until now, it would be a too little increase, and too different region to region, to be measured.
To tell the truth, it is impossible too to measure some global thermal gaps (differences year-to-year of hundredths of degree are meaningless when uncertainty is at tenth of degree) but this does not stop speculations (political rather than scientifical) on possible new worldwide record warm (anyway, it is easy to demonstrate that since 1998 no more global warming happened, but temperatures reached the peak and stayed upon it until now, contrary to the rise from late ’70ies to 1998).
re 101 Levin: Agreed we live in a zoo. I have deer eating the hosta, a bear in the compost bin, and moose dropping tics where ever they go. But dont worry about them. If you plot the population versus CO2, it it clear we can expect the numbers to continue to increase.
#106 Dave W
Welcome to ClimateAudit. Stick around and you’ll find answers to the questions you are asking.
#108 Boris
As you know full well the real embarrassment lies with Naomi Oreskes who does even know how do do searches on ISI properly and doesn’t understand the difference between climate change and global climate change. This whole episode was a complete farce as it’s patently obvious that the consensus claim of the IPCC is bogus. Rocks’s link is only one example of many that show there is no scientific consensus on the cause of the current warming period (CWP). The jury is well and truly still out and will probably remain so for quite some time yet. even when they emerge the decison will almost certainly (as it is now) be a minority verdict and we’ll have to go for a re-trial.
KevinUK
RE: #101 – Sometime between now and 2013 I reckon I’ll get an opportunity to top off my larder with deer jerkey.
RE: #104 -There will be a domino effect, eventually reaching North America. It could get a bit interesting by mid September if not earlier.
#106, DavidW, your questions are good ones and prove that you are not an idiot. I guess no one has answered because of your requirement that an answer include links. Another reason no one is answering is that this blog is really about auditing AGW math, specifically the statistical procedures of Hansen and Mann.
1. Are the ice-caps melting more than what they should do?
The major ice caps are greenland and antarctica. If they melted suddenly, which is almost impossible to imagine, we would have a temporary sea level problem. However, if global warming was happening, they would melt them over some period of time, which would greatly mitigate the problem. However, these ice caps have been gaining ice. So, no worries. They naturally gain and lose a small percentage. Don’t be fooled by reports that Greenland has lost so many tons of ice. When they say that, it’s because they don’t want to say that the tons lost is a miniscule percentage of the whole ice pack.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/12/05/sea-level-rise-not-from-antarctic-melting/#more-196
2. Is the sea level rising?
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/02/09/shocking-facts-about-sea-level-rise/#more-221
As anyone who has taken a bath knows, Sea level is actually controlled by any mass (either land or water) that is raised above the surface sphere. AGWers like to pretend that only ice affects sea level, but all volcanic islands including all of iceland, have lowered the sea level, when they rose out of the sea. Also, plate tectonics affects the level, and the bounce of areas like Norway, which are rising out of the sea. Sediment raises the sea level, which throws off the calculations that people are doing these days. Bottom line is even if it happened, humans would know about it, and adapt easily.
3. Is there more or less terrestial rainfall than normal?
I really don’t think anyone knows, since I don’t believe we have any idea about how much rain is falling on over 2/3 of the worlds surface, ie the oceans. In reality, the water cycle is really controlled by solar activity, so an increase or decrease in precipitation is hardly a fingerprint for AGW.
http://ks.water.usgs.gov/Kansas/waterdata/climate/homepage.ijc.html
RE 31:
Gunnar, you seem to know science, and I appreciate your candor, but you went out into space on that one. I doubt it’s anything more complex than that stated: Steve_M wants to stick to topics he knows and is fighting to keep HIS board from choking on off-topic posts — even the unthreadeds. Seems simple enough to me.
#118, you’re probably right.
Dear Dr. Steve McIntyre et al. Would you be so kind as to allow me to express some numbers that were flawed by I don’t know whom in the so called Radiative Forcing Formula? Please, just this time… 🙂
Re: #106
Question 1. Are the ice-caps melting more than what they should do?
Answer: To give an objective answer, it is first necessary to define a standard value for the meaning of “should.”
Should the ice caps melt or advance to a greater extent than they were on what date? How do or can we know what the actual measurable extent was on any selected date? Does our arbitrary selection of any given extent have any relevance to the question of whether or not an optimum ice extent does exist or ever can exist? Life thrived on this planet for hundreds of millions of years while there were no polar ice caps. Some proponents have claimed such a climate in which no polar ice caps existed are fatal to humans and the ecosystems humans rely upon. Is there any proven validity to arguments that warmer climatic conditions are catastrophic for humans and the ecosystems they require for sustenance? If you accept the AGW argument about shrinking ice caps at face value for the sake of discussion and verification, does the publicly available data support their claims and conclusions? How is it possible to reconcile AGW claims about greenhouse gasses (GHG), global warming due to human production of CO2, and denials of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) with the evidence of human settlements in Greenland; ice cap melting, refreezing, and remelting decades and centuries before human CO2 production existed; and evidence of the existence of the Medieval Warm Period? AGW proponents claim Global Warming caused by Human increases to CO2 occurred after around 1950, so how can such claims be reconciled to the scientific evidence that equal and greater levels of air temperature and CO2 existed for extensive periods of time in the decades, centuries, millenia, and geological ages prior to 1950? How much ice cap SHOULD exist today without the presence of humanity and its emissions of CO2? Can AGW proponents supply an objective answer to that question AND support it with scientific evidence verified by independent critics?
2. Is the sea level rising?
Yes, and it has been doing so ever since the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age. We live in an inter-glacial period during which the ice sheets are supposed to be melting and the sea levels rising. What is in dispute is the question of whether or not humans are accelerating the melting of the ice sheets and rise of sea levels by additional emissions of CO2. AGW proponents ae being criticized for using erroneous and/or improper data to reach invalid conclusions.
3. Is there more or less terrestial rainfall than normal?
Again, who can define what is “normal” terrestial rainfall, normal marine rainfall, or prove that rainfall and other precipitation has been or will be measured and measurable to a degree of accuracy adequate for climatological comparisons and forecasts?
All of the above questions point to the importance of gaining a valid scientific understanding of the differences between natural changes in regional and global climates versus anthropogenic changes added to natual changes in regional and global climates.
#109 Time for Lindström Show…Hoi polloi…Actually
we’ve had frosts in Götaland which is the southernmost
part of Sweden before, especially in the villages of
Hagshult (Småland) or Horn (Östergötland)..These places
are called “köldhål” I think translation is redundant.
But in fact outside these places put another 1-2C …
Tullinge 21 km SW of Stockholm Observatory had -2.2C last night Aug 31 which
is unprecedented..!?due to a short series 8-9 years or so
If you use SMHI website you can see that Stockholm Observatory
was just below +8C as Tmin! That’s a “summer” temp record UHI difference
if I’m not mistaken…You may also see that Jönköping AP
never has reached the +10C “dream/nightmare” limit today at the hourly readings!!
Last time with August frost in Götaland was 1998! (SMHI)
And some words for Bernie (I spell it with a
capital B after all
you’re not c c cummings’s son are you…!!??) Nordklim seem
to me to be a selection of “the usual suspects” I may be wrong
but in short: Not rural and/or outbackish enough for my taste…
Never mind MY LAYOUT problems… The Norwegian stations from that met.no site
didn’t work so smoothly for me. AND if you find TAFJORD
+21.2 or so in November that’s probably just the usual suspect:
Foehn (Föhn) effect by SSE winds
D. Patterson says: August 31st, 2007 at 10:42 am
There are not “standards” for many things because Earth is a constantly-changing system, as the whole universe is. I cannot conceive how many experts think that the atmosphere is static and eliminates the gravity force, convection, non-homogeneous density of air at different latitudes and altitudes, etc.
Something that seemingly always gets lost when people point out that melting glaciers/ice-caps is indicative of GW, particularly AGW, is that once the planet was warm enough for this to happen, it would necessarily continue even if the planet did not continue to warm. Melting ice does not require increasing temperature, only _increased_ temperature. Even if temps leveled out completely for 1000 years from today, if it is warm enough for glaciers or ice-caps to melt, such melt will continue.
Mark
NOTE: mind, I fully understand that glacial changes are not strictly due to ice melt.
Mark T, and ice melting is not strictly due to GW.
Not to be picky, but a couple people answered David before you did Gunnar. But no, they didn’t have any links.
——————–
I probably don’t need to answer the questions, but I will anyway. They will be short. 🙂
1. Ice-caps. We don’t know what they are supposed to be doing or the time periods over which they are suposed to be doing it.
2. Sea level. Rises and falls all the time, over time.
3. Rainfall. We couldn’t track it and woundn’t know what to make of it if we could.
———————
As far as Oreskes, not exactly like Peiser. They actually found some that did “reject” this time (I think 3 or 7 or something). And they actually did just what she did this time. (Of course, it’s being blown out of proportion, as always, as everything does). If you look at the entire thing, it appears most of the supposed “neutral papers” are that way because they’re about unrelated subjects! What a waste of time. Although it will be like Peiser in that I’m sure Lambert is going to be all over this.
It doesn’t matter though, what she did didn’t do what she said she was trying to do. The claim in that essay (which didn’t appear to be made to be replicated, what a surprise, how unique!) was since the AMS, AGU, AAAS, NAS and IPCC have said what they said, it probably reflected the views of their members (That one is kinda dicey in and of itself, but I’ll let it slide). However, the organizations might have the iron fist on any dissenters. (Possible)
How did she test that idea? By surveying the members? By seeing if “peer review” is actually “peer pressure”? By interviewing the people creating press releases and organizational reports? By doing some sort of, like, you know, audit? No. She looked at abstracts! (I’m ignoring she didn’t even know what the people that did the work searched for (She never says she did the analysis herself, she used passive voice in the article)).
Now these abstracts? Of published papers the same reports and magazines use. The same body of work the IPCC used or similar. Of course you’re not going to find any dissent in PR materials put out by committee, or the same materials being used to advance a position, or the materials that make up the other ones!
Oh, and there’s two (count ’em, two!) million dollar questions here: a) Why the heck would anyone bother replicating it for updated results? All it’s going to show is that the stuff the other material comes from agrees with the materials it contributes to. Duh. b) Um, I forget.
Oh, I agree. Even here in CO Springs you can see ice melt on days when the _air temperature_ is well below freezing. In fact, we’re known for heavy snows that are gone within a day or two. Take away the clouds and the surface of any ice or snow is much warmer than the ambient air temperature.
Mark
RE#106, concerning your item 2:
See any acceleration in sea level rise here? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png
Anything of historic note in the recent time history here compared to the past? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Oh, I remember b) now. If this is supposed to be about the consensus on “anthropogenic global warming” then why isn’t that the term being searched for!! (Ignoring the pointlessness of looking at abstracts that comprise the publications to see if they agree with each other in the first place. It’s like talking to a dog, but less fun. No, wrong analogy. It’s like looking in a mirror and expecting to see Fidel Castro staring back at you. Well, unless you’re him of course.)
>> Melting ice does not require increasing temperature, only _increased_ temperature.
Mark, you’re right. However, since melting ice takes a lot of energy, it would require continuous input of energy, right? Otherwise, melting ice would pull the temperatures back down.
>> Not to be picky, but a couple people answered
Sam, you’re right, I should have realized that someone would beat me to the submit button.
With your answers, you demonstrate your knack for the most succinct, correct summary.
I’ve posted here some issues that were blatantly far from the point of this blog; you know, all those messages related with c-d and th-d. I know perfectly that the objective of this forum is to analyze the methodology used for knowing some issues on climate, which are more accordingly with statistics than with factual sciences. However, I’ve learned many things here from other scientists that take their time to post because many methodologies were impossible to understand without good base from pure sciences. I think that there are issues that always come inadequate for the real objective of this site, and those issues are superfluous for the justification of this site. Anyway, many times, when we are centered on analyzing the methodology we find errors, misleading items, flawed ciphers, etc. that makes the work in this forum to be very interesting. 🙂
Re #119, Gunnar
So do you feel any urge to apologise to your host ?
106, David: Don’t miss this site. Check the Index, and you will find a lot of explanations. (warning, the site is HATED by many true believers).
#132
Steve, I’m sorry for letting my frustration get the best of me.
Re#126, Sam Urbinto
This is way more complicated then simple abstract glancing. Almost all scientific publications on climate Ive read in the last year (couple of hundred) make at least lip service to AGW. Standard attribution in the abstract is like this: (our research) is very important to understanding of consequences of AGW , or (observed phenomena) is due to climate change induced by antropogenic CO2 emissions , etc.
Yet actual findings described in most of the articles have absolutely nothing to do with warming, let alone it attribution to CO2. How one would attribute such articles? Accepting AGW idea? Rejecting it (by proving that some part of it is wrong)?
How about numerous researches assessing GHG emissions, or best ways to curb them? Accepting AGW by default?
How one could possibly opine countless articles of what if scenario, like what will happen with cod fisheries if Antarctica will melt? Supporting AGW of just mocking it?
Popular vote on such complicated and diverse subject as Climate Change is meaningless, especially implemented on such profane level. As one saying goes: do not argue with fools. They will drag you to their level and beat you by shear experience
#134 Gunnar, you’ve been very pleasant recently, seriously. It’s been nice converstions. Thanks.
#135 Andrey, don’t get me wrong. I “know” it’s mostly lip service (or at least it seems so to me). But I’m being as neutral and calm and civil as I can, and keep in line with Steve’s wishes and purpose. I try to the advance the conversation, operate from a common framework, understand both the point and mood of the topics, and keep the subjects towards auditing and checking things and science, both from my perspectives and that of others. (I slip sometimes….) Those are side issues what you bring up. To me at least.
Don’t get me started on the “this stuff (including co2) are pollutants” things re us supreme court or how I really feel about that essay. I don’t want to get kicked off this site! 🙂
I worked in government for quite a while, I know how it goes. Like I said; is it peer review, or is it peer pressure? The answer doesn’t concern me, nor the details. I try not to mix my pizza and my ice cream in the same bowl.
# 135 an 136
Curiously, many articles that suppossedly are pro-AGW articles contain valuable data that contradicts AGW. For example, the data from Drew T. Shindell et al. Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum. Science, Vol. 294, Issue 5549, 2149-2152, 7 December 2001 contains information that supports the theory on solar irradiance like the main force that drives Esrth’s climate. Another example is Broecker, Wallace S. Was the Medieval Warm Period Global? Science. 23 February 2001. Vol. 291. No. 5508, pp. 1497 1499, where the author gives credit to other warmings sharper than our warming.
I think that in the current state of things, we have to read between lines.
138, another example would be the clips of Carl Wunch in the “swindle” movie. He said things that he clearly believed to be true, which clearly cast doubt on the robustness and reliability of models in general, and then objected when it came out in a movie that didn’t support his climate belief system.
I think there are a lot of scientists who recite the creed, but then finds things in their scientific work that aren’t in full support of the creed.
Just noting that the NorthWest Passage is no longer passable. For the past two weeks, it has been smooth sailing but now the three routes are choked off by the ice.
You’ll need to zoom in with the 500M resolution Terra satellite image to see it, but noone is getting through now unless you have a good icebreaker.
re 138.
Just translate your c02 posts into Moo-cow morse code and SteveMc will be none the wiser
moo moooo moo moo
moo moo moooo
RE: #140 – You can see the Dempster Highway at 500m per pixel. Cool! I digress.
Yeah, even during the two weeks of “opening” it was dicey. Really a maze. No easy, straight forward ice free way to go. That’s of course typical of the NWP. Brutal. Until next year …..
# 140
I cannot see the fire. Please, give me the coordinates or the quadrants.
>> Popular vote on such complicated and diverse subject as Climate change is meaningless
Oh, now consensus doesn’t matter? @#*&@^
>> Just noting that the NorthWest Passage is no longer passable.
Actually, it’s typically passable in the middle of summer during a solar maximum, but not into september. I’ve been interested in this possibility for a decade or more. We need a good metal sailboat and we need to leave in late June.
Just for fun.
I googled scientific consensus. Pages and pages of hits, and every hit is about climate change. Looks like no other than GW scientific issue is using popular vote argument in discussion.
From wiki:
“Northwest Passages or Northwestern Passages.
Sought by explorers for centuries as a possible trade route, it was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903-6.”
So Navigating the NW passage isn’t exactly a first.
Andrey, you say:
As an equal opportunity auditor, I have to report the following:
“Scientific consensus” – 553,000 hits
“scientific consensus” -“global warming” -“climate change” – 228,000 hits
Half the hits don’t mention either global warming or climate change. Unfortunately, it seems that the false god of “scientific consensus” has infected other branches of science.
The clearest comment on the subject comes from Michael Crichton:
Best to all,
w.
#147 Willis
We can always rely on your for a good relevant quote.
To re-iterate the last bit which in many ways is a strap line for this blog
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If its consensus, it isnt science. If its science, it isnt consensus. Period.”
The full test is here.
Note the references to Drakes equation and the TTAPS report (Nuclear Winter) and my favourite alarmist (Hansen has someway to go yet to reach this guys dizzy heights) – Paul Ehrlich.
KevinUK
Re#136
Sam,
What I am trying to say is that bogus concept of scientific consensus does not worth your serious attention. Let it to MSM, or smile while commenting.
Re#147
Wa-a-a, Willis, why ruin my Friday fairy story?
Googled scientific consensus does occasionally deliver hits explaining what scientific consensus is, some post-factum history lessons about how scientific consensus was wrong (especially outrageous H. Pillory story), and occasionally passionate rants of creationalists against consensus science.
What Googled list does not contain is any scientific discussion (and there is plenty in modern science) which is pressing scientific consensus as an argument of validity for some theory. Not in quark physics, evolutionary genetics, or sociopath psychology, etc.
Andrey Levin says:
September 1st, 2007 at 6:08 am
“Popular vote on such complicated and diverse subject as Climate Change is meaningless”
Andrey, seriously, I resent that statement. I live in California:
“Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law in California, was signed by Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger on September 27, 2006. It sets up the first enforceable state-wide program in the U.S. to cap all greenhouse gas emissions from major industries that includes penalties for non-compliance. In signing the bill into law, Schwarzenegger declared,
That “consensus” has informed the people (and the people actually believe they can control the climate too) Not even that big freeze we had made a difference in the popular, “Hip” political understanding of this issue. For example, my husband has tried to find funding (along with city officials) from the governor to update the tsunami response/information/planning stuff we need around here (we live in a coastal area) There is no money to spare they were told. And that danger is real.
Willis and KevinUK-love that speech by MC.
SteveSadlov, it is finally feeling like summer here in So. Cal!
Solar cycle 24 has finally started. If the sunspot cycle does affect temp. and if there really is a 5-year time constant (lag) as several researchers suggest, then we should start seeing a cooling soon…
#163 – jae – I think we are still in the bottom of cycle 23. There are a couple of small sunspots right now but solar flux etc. is still low.
The next cycle will start when we start seeing sunspots with reversed magnetic field (like in your link but that was from last year) but also they will be at lower latitude on the sun (below 30 degrees or more than one-third away from the sun’s equator.) Nothing like that recently.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/512/
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
The other thing to note about cycle 23 is that it is fast becoming one of the longest cycles – now 11 years 3 months. Solar cycle theory suggests that we should be seeing cooling on the planet now (which one might conclude is happening going by the satellite temperature measurements but certainly not from GISS and the Hadley Centre.)
I have to admire the fact that you guys take widespread agreement by climate scientists and use it as a kind of rallying cry. Of course, if the mass of climate scientists thought that solar was responsible, I don’t think anyone would be quoting Crichton. Crichton wouldn’t even be quoting Crichton.
It would be helpful if you had some kind of competing theory instead of twenty competing theories that contradict one another and contradict evidence and known physical properties. But Galileo having been dead for some time and all that.
#154. Folks, I’m not really interested in people discussing here whether a “consensus” exists or not or whether a consensus is relevant or not. There is probably a consensus among climate scientists in favor of the Hockey Stick. So what.
Boris, I’m just trying to understand things and not present my own theory. BTW, Boris, remind me: what wsa your answer to my question as to a reference deriving 2.5 deg C in the level of detail that would be required for even the most modest engineering project.
My answer was to look for a good textbook.
Sorry SteveM.
Boris,
“it would be helpful if you had some kind of competing theory” that’s the myth in a nutshell dude!
There doesn’t have to be one. You and the AGW consensus or whatever the label, are the creating “GW” in the first place as a “condition” or an “unusual condition”. So another theory is not required. Not at all. At least in my humble opinion. And before you say it… Ice melting? Many reasons for that already.
# 148
Kevin,
I think Crichton is right on Drake’s formula. The formula says nothing but a progression of guesses. I touched it in one of my conferences and the conclusion of the audience agreed with my conclusion. It’s merely a 1 = (1) (1) (1) …
I have been investigating an issue that, so far, I’ve heard no one else address. I am referring to the sheer volume of heat being added to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels. The machines that burn those fuels — cars, coal-fired power plants, etc — typically operate at relatively low thermal efficiencies. For instance, some 75 – 80% of the heat generated by the burning of gasoline in a typical car engine goes out the exhaust system or the radiator or is lost in heat-generating friction in the drive train. So burning fossil fuels not only adds CO2 to the air, it adds heat as well.
The question is, how significant is this additional heat? Using historical records of fuel consumption, and using estimates of combustion efficiency and thermal efficiency, I have calculated that since 1949 the burning of coal, gasoline, diesel, LPG and jet fuel has released 5.0143E+18 kJ to the atmosphere. Using the published figures of 5.19E+18 kg for the mass of the atmosphere and 1.012 kJ/kg.C as its specific heat, that release is sufficient to cause a temperature increase of .88 degrees C. (1949 was chosen as a starting point because the best data I could find on the consumption of these fuels begins in that year. Those five fuels were chosen because data on them was easiest to gather.) That is an increase that exceeds by some 46% the increase of .6 degrees C. observed since 1949.
Furthermore, this understates the total heat added by the burning of fossil fuels because:
a) It does not include such uses of fuels as the natural gas used to directly heat homes; b) It does not include the urban heat island effect or the effect of all the paving thats been done since 1949. For instance, some 358,900,458,000 gallons of asphalt have been consumed in the U.S. since 1949. I have no data yet on total world consumption; c) It ignores the considerable number of manufacturing processes that vent waste heat into the atmosphere.
This analysis also ignores all of the non-solar natural heat additions to the atmosphere that have occurred since 1949, such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens volcano.
Granted, the magnitude of this heat is quite small compared to what is received from the sun on a daily basis. However, the temperature change we seek to explain is correspondingly small. Dumping this heat directly into the air either: a) had no effect on temperatures, b) caused temperatures to go down, or c) caused them to rise as the calculations indicate. I cannot see any basis for believing a or b.
The implications of these numbers are clear:
1) Since a conservative estimate shows that enough heat has been added to account for 146% of the observed warming, the effect of CO2 cannot be as great as has been claimed. Perhaps both CO2 increases and waste heat increases are responsible, but I see no basis for dismissing the waste heat and attributing all of the observed increase to CO2.
2) Since the observed temperature increase is less than what the waste heat should have caused, this casts further doubt on the claim that any increase in the temperature of the atmosphere will be amplified by the effect of the additional H2O that the hotter atmosphere will (presumably) hold. Instead, it lends credence to the idea that the atmosphere has natural attenuators that prevent, rather than encourage, any sort of temperature runaway scenario.
3) Despite ongoing economic growth, waste heat generation may in fact begin to decline. The biggest contributor of waste heat is coal used primarily for the production of electricity. And the thermal efficiency of coal-fired power plants is increasing rapidly. As these efficiency gains are realized, the waste heat from the production of electricity should level off or at least its rate of increase will decline.
At this point, I am seeking a climate or atmospheric scientist to review my data, my calculations and my assumptions. Are there any scientists among the readers of this blog interested in pursuing this project?
159, the mistake that you’re making is assuming that heat simply builds up. Over the 58 year period that you mention, it’s had plenty of time to escape. You need to do a steady-state balance to determine the actual rise, and when you do, it turns out to be essentially nothing.
Oh-oh! There tons of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, AGWs, no AGWs, etc. here. Perhaps a list of us all would be convenient.
Nasif Nahle says: September 1st, 2007 at 10:32 am
Today is my birthday… Time is running fast. Just 26 one year above the last year! 😉
#156. Boris, I’ve obviously looked around. I take it that you are unable to identify a textbook that provides the requested derivation in the requested detail or you would have cited it. BTW I’m not saying that such a derivation is impossible. But again please provide me with a reference rather than say: go to a library.
Number 160:
The heat wont escape as radiation regardless of the time period that elapses without first producing an increase in temperature. If there is no increase in temperature, how can there be an increase in radiant loss?
Given a certain rate of thermal input to the atmosphere and a certain rate of radiant loss, the atmospheres temperature equilibrates at some value. If the thermal inputs rise, the temperature rises, radiant losses increase, and a new equilibrium is reached that is higher than the old equilibrium temperature. This is what happens in summer. If the earth remained tilted toward the sun for eternity, its Northern Hemisphere temperatures would remain at summer time levels, regardless of how long the the additional heat has to escape.
Likewise, a small increase in heat to the atmosphere will produce a corresponding increase in temperature until the resulting increase in radiant losses cause the atmosphere to stabilize at a new temperature, one that will inevitably be higher than the previous temperature. On an annual basis, this increase is far too small to be within our ability to measure. But an immeasurably small increase nontheless exists, and each subsequent year see the addition of the same waste heat as the previous year plus additional waste heat from the growth in the use of fossile fuels.
A one time thermal addition to the atmosphere would produce a one time increase in temperature, radiant losses would go up and the temperature would gradually retreat back to its original value. But what we have here is an ongoing, continuous addition.
The last sentence of paragraph two of 164 should read, “If the northern hemisphere remained tilted toward the sun for eternity, the temperature of the northern hemisphere would remain at summer levels, regardless of how long the additional heat has to escape.”
153: Thanks, John. I thought that article was for 2007, not 2006. My bad. I still would not be surprised if we get a cooling period, though. We certainly have not seen much warming, if any, in the past 8-9 years, and it looks like we have a La Nina going. The West Coast has sure had a cool summer.
What is the effect of atmospheric losses? How much energy does that transport out of the atmosphere?
164, the calculation that you did was the total heat produced by all burning in the second half of the 20th century, and its sensible heat effect:
That is, to use your terminology, a one-time addition.
If you want to do that on an annual basis, and then calculate the tiny but finite increase in outbound radiation, you can do that. It gets lost in the shuffle.
# 168
Richard Sharpe,
I think the rule is 0.016742 in –> 0.01742 out. If didn’t, we were toasted.
Re: 169
You didn’t include any units.
The planet constantly outgasses still. There must be compensating losses.
Boris says:
Boris, IMHO, most of these competing theories have more going for them than the AGW hypothesis. They are all backed up by definite plausible physical theories, and they all are supported by some empirical evidence. We can’t seem to locate the physical basis of AGW, except for broad hand-waving statements, and the only empirical evidence for AGW is that it is getting warmer. Another Waldo game, maybe.
Re 165:
If the northern hemisphere remained tilted toward the sun for eternity, the temperature of the northern hemisphere would remain at summer levels, regardless of how long the additional heat has to escape.
The hottest part of the summer is usually one to two months after the summer solstice. This means that the northern hemisphere is warming while the incident radiation is decreasing. The decrease is due to the changing angle of incidence. If the radiant energy from the sun stayed at the same angle of incidence as occurs on the solstice the temperature would rise well above summer levels.
Radiant energy equilibrium is a theoretical construct in which time is eliminated. It is an approximation to what happens when nothing changes for a long period. So long as things are changing (incident angles, distance from the sun, the temperature of the earth, the temperature of the sun, etc) the earth is never in radiant energy equilibrium. It is always moving towards equilibrium but when the above factors change, so does the equilibrium “target”.
I find it easiest to think of the climate as a process that moves towards a changing target. Climate tracks things, it doesn’t really have a single stable operating point.
#162 Nasif. Happy Birthday, and Many Happy Returns.
#164
Even if you, incorrectly, ignore the radiative heat losses that Larry discusses, you need to consider that not all the heat would remain in the atmosphere – some would be absorbed into the ocean and soil. Fossil fuel burning is locally significant, but almost irrelevant as a source of heat on the global scale.
Anecdotal climate change:
If there was no snow at Artist Point, Iam sure there would be some news about it, but too much snow doesnt seem to support the ‘global warming’ cause. So it gets ignored by the media. (I know, too much xfiles)
If snow cover remains 20 feet deep for a whole year – wouldnt that help glaciers, reduce or stop the summer melting?
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2007/06/29_542artistpointwork.htm
Richard, those are dimensionless values derived from Eg/Eb. The compensating factors are solar by their nature. There are more compensating factors, as Lw, for example.
Thank you, MarkR. 🙂
On a different subject, before I finish the Vitart paper, the Pacific looks like it is shifting ever so slowly into La Nina. The latest temperature anomaly plot is here (double-click on the colored map for a closeup of the equatorial Pacific temperature). That’s a rather impressive spread of below-normal water across the Pacific.
Of equal interest is the plot available by double-clicking on the “Assorted Plots” button. It shows a depth profile of the equatorial Pacific and indicates a lot of anomalously cool water beneath the surface. If the winds finally switch to a regular La Nina pattern then that cool pattern will be reinforced. Note, too, the lack of piled-up warm water in the Warm Pool.
Re #179 Oops, the link is here .
welikerocks said:
Of course not. I said it would be helpful (you know, instead of grasping at every theory, looking all desperate-like [may not be desperation, but it’s how it looks {and looks can matter a great deal} to the outside]).
CO2 will not magically have no effect or a small effect because you want it to. We know quite a lot about climate sensitivity form observation alone.
We do? Like what?
Re #80: Boris. How ’bout you provide just one reference. Presumably your best shot first.
Nasif,
Love your “attitude”.
My best,
Simon
The Zhang, Jinlun, 2007 Journal of Climate study, conducted through two NASA and NSF grants, must be among the most convoluted pro-AGW papers to have been produced in a while.
We all knew that the models never predicted polar amplification of GW in the south. Well, they did, but that was in their infancy (before Antarctic records failed to show any warming) and now theyve been corrected.
We also knew that falling temperatures and ice mass gain in the Antarctic continent were perfectly compatible with AGW theory (think of all those stratospheric CFCs and increased precipitation due to the warming ocean that surrounds it ).
But what about the 1979-2006 increase of sea-ice around Antarctica measured by the satellites? How can the warming ocean that produces that alleged precipitation increase be freezing more at the same time? Well, thanks to this study this also has an explanation now. CAGW-believers need no longer worry about this nuisance. Up to now their line of defense was a mere that sea-ice increase is not statistically significant (Steve Bloom et al, numerous blogs). From now on they have an elaborate paper to rely on as well.
Alright, Im just a layman. Perhaps I shouldnt be commenting on this. But, honestly, to this humble observer this paper reads like one of those medieval scholastic attempts to reconcile Greek philosophy with Christian faith.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf (2MB + download)
Re 152, 153, we are not at solar minimum, which is at least a year away. My estimate is November 2009, for what that is worth.
184:
And before models attempted to account for more than just the mixed layer in the Southern ocean. Just making sure you get your history right.
Re 186
Thanks Boris. To be honest, I never thought that they just fudged the models to account for the failing prediction. Things must be more sophisticated than that, I guess.
But leaving the models apart, there must surely be some straightforward physical explanation for the very paradoxical end-results of all this:
1) In the one place in the world where atmospheric water vapour is always at its minimum and the CO2 increase has thus the highest potential to be effective, no T increase is observed.
2) Vast masses of oceanic saline water are purportedly getting warmer and causing widespread precipitation but at the same time those masses of water are freezing more. Think of it: a source of heat is applied to a mass of water, which in turn responds by freezing more than before. Why is this phenomenon not applicable to the Arctic Ocean?
Ive been asking for some model-free explanation to these paradoxes and never got any at all. Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.
On #184 – Mikel – The Antarctic sea ice should be peaking about now. But have a look how far the sea ice extends into the Southern Atlantic ocean.
Here is one that shows South Georgia Island (of Shackleton and whaling fame), it is in the lower centre of the image. The ice is almost all the way to the island and would certainly envelope the nearby south Sandwich Islands. This is 800 miles away from Antarctica. (Ice is in false-color Red.)
Here is another of the middle of the south Atlantic and the sea ice extends even farther out.
“CO2 will not magically have no effect or a small effect because you want it to. We know quite a lot about climate sensitivity form observation alone.”
No we don’t. We have no idea how the planet faired or behaved in the geological past on a global scale or even a local scale climate-wise during teeny tiny 50 yr, 100 yr, 200 yr time periods looking back, hundreds, thousands or miillions of years in time. And the C02 content differed vastly higher and even lower compared to now, and it still got either very hot and or very cold for long periods of time despite it. You can’t go back and look at small sections of time like that; not at all; and certainly we do NOT have data like that to compare the present teeny tiny time period to and to claim something unusual is going right on now with fractions of degrees “warmer”. And even if we try… ie: Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period and Hockey Sticks… what happens? sheesh boy is this is getting old! 😉
187:
One observational explanation for the increase in sea ice is the recent change in trend of the Southern Annular Mode, which is believed to be tied to the Antarctic ozone hole and its effect on the stratosphere. Here’s one such paper:
Influence of the Southern Annular Mode on the sea ice-ocean system: the role of the thermal and mechanical forcing
190:
To be clear, the paper doesn’t really talk about why the SAM may be shifting, but looks at the SAM’s effect on sea ice.
rocks,
No one from the consensus argues that CO2 is the prime driver of climate at all times. But clearly CO2 does have an effect–that’s basic physics. And clearly–by your admission–the climate has changed by great amounts in the past. This suggests that there are strong feedbacks and that climate sensitivity is high.
Boris, no all that suggests is that the climate changes. Wow. And… We do not know how much on small time scales like this “human industrial” miniscule time we are looking at here. The CO2 content in the past has been lower then now and it still got warmer. It’s been higher then now, and it still got colder. Go figure.
I’m done please and enough said – I don’t want to drive SteveM batty here. 😉
Re #192, Boris
… or that there are strong drivers and that climate sensitivity is low …
Just found this on Yahoo:
Mysterious Solar Ripples Detected
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070830/sc_space/mysterioussolarripplesdetected
re 192
As a serious and not rhetorical question – I have read this point of view being put forth by AGW advocates before – notably Steve Bloom on this blog. The question that immediately springs to my mind about this is how this point of view is to be made compatible with the “hockey stick” curve. If climate sensitivity is high and there are more drivers than just CO2, why is the “hockey stick” model of a stable climate and “unprecedented” warming with manmade CO2 plausible?
Oh those computer models…
we saw this the other night on the Discovery Channel; Mythbusters, and found it amusing!
Windows down vs. air conditioning
“Urban puzzle” regarding fuel use: it is more efficient, on a hot day, to run with the A/C on and windows up than to run with windows down (b/c of increasing car’s drag).
Computer-based mpg measurements:
* 11.7/11.8 with A/C on and windows up
* 11.7/11.8 with A/C off and windows up
* 11.3 with A/C off and windows down
So, according to the computer, it’s better to use A/C with windows up.
This was too quick and easy for TV, so they decided to stage a seven hour marathon, race-til-you’re-empty duel, with Jamie driving an SUV with A/C on and Adam driving an SUV with windows down. Though, once the safety inspector intervened, it was no longer a seven-hour marathon, it was a bit slower (45mph instead of 55mph), and a lot shorter (only 5 gallons each).
Jamie’s A/C car ran out of gas first — Adam’s windows down SUV ran for another 30 laps — completely contradicting the computer mpg estimate. Computer estimate is based on air flow into the engine,-so it would appear that it is unable to —properly model— the difference between A/C and windows down. ”
Geez, and that’s a pretty straight forward “simple” senerio there too! 😉
Who here was the control systems guy? What Boris is arguing is that feedback causes swings to be magnified. That’s possible, but the actual feedback gain (dimensionless; degrees/degrees) has to be constrained to be between 0.5 (where the overall gain becomes 1) and 1 (where the overall gain becomes infinite, and the system becomes instable). The system response is 1/(1-G).
If the gain is on the order of three (as the alarmist scenarios claim) it has to be constrained to be somewhere very close to 0.67. Not impossible, but highly improbable that of all of the possible numbers for the cloud feedback gain that it would fall within that range.
In other words, just from a Bayesian argument, low overall gain solutions are much more probable than high gain solutions, because there are so many fewer ones that don’t go completely instable.
I think this is what several people were trying to say wrt control system dynamics.
M. Simon, Thank you very much! 🙂
Boris,
I know we’re not allowed to talk here about the sensibility of that colorless, odorless, vital, etc. gas. However, physically, that gas has not the enough E as to cause a GW. Biologically, that gas cannot be exhausted below a limit taken incorrectly like “standard”.
Regarding 168:
I made a single calculation, but that does not mean the waste heat is a one-time addition.
Consider: In 1949, we dumped x amount of heat into the atmosphere. In 1950, we dumped x amount into the atmosphere again, plus y”, the amount of increase over 1949, making the total for 1950 = x + y. In 1951, we dumped x + y again, plus z, with z being the amount by which 1951 increased over 1950, making the total for 1951 = “x” + “y” + “z”. And so forth until the present. Every year we repeat the previous years addition of waste heat plus add some more. That is not a one time addition. It is an on-going, increasing addition.
You will get the same temperature change whether you calculate the temperature change each year and add the changes or calculate using the total energy added. You get the same answer because (x/c + y/c + z/c +….) = (x+y+z +…)/c (With x, y and z being the amounts of energy added each year and c being the quantity needed to change the temperature of the atmosphere by 1 degree.)
174 says
It is true that my calculations do not include the effect of increased radiant losses from the increased temperature — but Im not ignoring those losses or claiming they do not exist. I acknowledge that such losses will attenuate the temperature increase, but I believe the effect of that is quite small. We are talking about a change of less than one degree on an object at an average temperature of about 290 degrees Kelvin. Also bear in mind the considerable list of additional sources of heat my calculations did not include.
As far as the amounts being lost into the ocean and the soil, do you have any science to suggest how much that would be? Remember, the waste heat that comes out of smokestacks, automobile exhausts, etc, is considerably hotter than ambient, which means it will rise away from the ocean and the soil and begin mixing with the atmosphere.
So how much will go into the ocean and the soil versus the atmosphere? Even if we agree that half of the waste heat goes to the ocean and the soil — and I dont see how that is possible given that the waste heat moves up away from ocean and soil — but even if we grant that half goes that way we are still looking at a temperature change of .44 degrees, which is still 73% of the observed change since 1949.
I see no scientific grounds for dismissing this waste heat as being lost in the shuffle or irrelevant on a global scale. If the suns output were to increase by .1% per year every year, that would be a very small increase — would you contend that the earths atmosphere would never get hotter because such an increase will just get lost in the shuffle or because such an increase is globally irrelevant?
Larry, you’re trying to argue a point about control system theory that the alarmists just don’t understand: feedback. They aren’t taught the concepts of causality, either, but that’s another story. Wowing ’em with facts just simply won’t help.
Mark
192, 196:
Good points, both.
Yes, the forcings could be high and the sensitivity low. That’s why when one looks at the forcings (or estimates for the past), the sensitivity comes in at 3C, though there is a lot of uncertainty. Models come to a similar conclusion, despite the Luddite-like mistrust some seem to have for them. If models are so easy to fudge, then someone should be able to fudge one with a low CS.
Re #202, Boris
Please explain the use of “that’s why” to link these two sentences. How exactly is the second sentence implied by the first ?
200, here’s a simpler analysis: if it were possible to make the case that the heat itself was causing the warming, don’t you think the AGW crowd would be all over it? For them, it’s a no-brainer. Not only can you villainize fossil fuels, but you can also implicate nuclear and even fusion. What’s not for a Luddite to like?
RC specifically denies it. I’m sure that if it could be shown, they’d be shouting it from the mountaintops.
They’re mistrusted because the people designing them demonstrate the same lack of understanding of control theory as you do. They openly admit they “tune” the models to provide the behavior they want.
Nobody is trying because it is a pointless exercise. Anyone can write a model that behaves any way they want. Non sequitur.
Mark
Mark, the Lindzen iris theory predicts a negative feedback. Of course you can construct models that can produce results all the way from negative feedback to instability. The question isn’t whether these models or choices of parameters exist, the question is why did they chose those particular parameters.
I could construct anything I want, even an acausal system. The choice of parameters is arbitrary and always mentioned in the context of “we couldn’t get X behavior without doing this to CO2!” The models are completely mis-specified simply because of all the unknowns they “think” don’t have much impact… you know, such things as the heat source for our planet, clouds, etc. All those minor things.
Mark
You know the old saying, “give me four adjustable parameters and I can fit an elephant, give me five and I can fit the tail”. And then people wonder why other aren’t impressed by “computer models”. This isn’t rocket science that they’re doing at NASA.
I always heard it as “give me five and I can tell you what he had for breakfast!” 🙂
Thank heavens. Gavin’s comments will bite him eventually.
Mark
Seriously believe that, huh?
Unlike you, I don’t deal with matters of belief, I deal with matters of fact. I can’t recall off the top of my head how many times I’ve heard “the only way we can get this response is to adjust the CO2, therefore…” in a press release regarding a model output.
I tell you what, you cling to your single hypothesis (needs to pass at least one test before being called theory) and I’ll keep hoping another that explains things better shows up. In the end, my position is much more tenable because it hasn’t failed every test that’s been thrown at it to date.
Mark
Re:212
Buddenbrook
As I have pointed out elsewhere, anything even remotely like this in the private sector would have serious legal consequences.
212, 213, this whole thing is very, very reminiscent of the 2004 Washington state Governor’s election, and the way that King county kept “screwing up” over and over, and the “mistakes” always favored one candidate. There was a blogger who was a statistician (!) who was able to demonstrate that the odds of it being accidental were infinitesimal. Not to wander this far off-topic, just to say that it has the identical “look and feel” as this. If you’re curious, you can google it. There’s a lot of info on it.
I notice posts were removed. Is this something we shouldn’t discuss?
It just seems to me that the way the criticism is worded and how the counter arguments are laid out on this blog, it does not come across as just a scientific disagreement, but more as a strong and clear accusation of [removed]. So I wondered if this was deliberate, and whether it was ment as such.
It is difficult to miss what is implied. And if what is implied is true (it does look statistically rather likely I admit), that is then not anymore a question of science, but a question of politics, and the follow-up asks itself: What could be done about it politically?
Re 22 Artic Sea Ice is melting at record rate due to almost unbroken clear skies at the time of the year the Sun is up for 24 hours a day.
The following is from the NSIDC Artic sea ice news,
August 2007
“Satellite data show that skies over the Beaufort Sea were clear or mostly
clear for 43 of the 55 days between June 1 and July 23, 2007”
RC has always been an advocacy.
Mark
My point was that you’d never know it from the “about”. I don’t want to quote the whole thing here, but here’s the introductory paragraph:
Is there anything in there to hint that they’re taking one side or the other on any issue? There’s nothing in any of the other paragraphs, either. Notwithstanding, they still saw fit to post a disclaimer:
Unless they’re going to take a position separate and apart from the science, why say that?
Agreed. That they censor comments and/or questions they cannot deal with is evidence of that…
Mark
#200: I suspect Steve M. is about to blast this discussion to smithereens, but…
You’re ignoring how fast the earth system actually radiates heat away from the planet. If it increases its outgoing radiation at a rate of x per year, for example, then the heat doesn’t add up the way you think it does.
Maybe you’re confusing the outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere as seen from space with the temperature of the lower troposphere?
Actually let me correct that: it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere; just with the rate of radiation/heat transfer through the system.
I was intrigued by this comment at RC about climate models and the credibility of Exxon doing a climate model:
I didn’t notice Gavin (or Boris) rushing in to repudiate this comment. If they think that, then what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: people who don’t “trust” UCAR or GISS would be equally entitled to hold those views about GISS or UCAR models.
Re #222
Even though their grant money is related to how scary a scenario they can create. Imagine what they would be scraping by on if they hadn’t found this cash cow.
Gee, Steve, do you think they might be projecting?
I think they express their honest view of climate modelling, whatever their intent. Rather revealing.
222:
I guess you can. You could hold those views about any scientific enterprise whatsoever. You might ask why you don’t trust the models. Because you think climate modelers are incompetent? Corrupt? A little from columns A & B? And what about the history of models? When did the deceit or incompetence begin? 1960s? 1950s? I think a view that modelers are somehow inserting lines of code to get the result they want is fantastical–and it’s unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. It begins to look like a conspiracy theory. Note that questioning models–even auditing them, if you will–is fine. Pointing out weaknesses is fine. But saying you don’t “trust” them reeks of the gut and not the head.
Now, as for the good folks at Exxon/Mobil, well they have some history, don’t they? Having funded the CEI for years, they have at least given financial approval to the dissembling that goes on in that organization.
224:
To be clear, “they” is one semi-anonymous poster 438 posts down the line. Hardly revealing of any “they” I can possibly think of.
Is this soviet science, or what? Modelling is reliable, only if the source meets ideological muster.
Nature and reason will be the final judge.
Re #225
Rember they are the ones that project evil intent on anyone who disagrees with them (Hansen). They are the ones who refuse to share their code and processes at a level that another researcher can duplicate. They are the ones who have something to gain by promoting global warming. How many research grants do you think they would get if they said yes the world is warming but it’s natural? Remember Hansen is the father of global cooling as well as global warming.
If you don’t think researchers can’t be influenced or corrupted consider Lysenkoism in the USSR, the cloning scandal in Korea. Consider N-Rays, cold fusion, ESP and polywater where researchers found effects that didn’t exist. ESP is a very good example where Rhine at Duke distorted his statistical data without realizing what he was doing. If you look to hard for an specific answer your going to find it. A scientist that is skeptical about his own results is probably a good scientist, an scientist who is an advocate is most certainly not.
#225. I expressed no views of my own as I haven’t studied the models. If it is the view of at least some RC readers, that a climate model in the hands of an unscrupulous person could be easily tweaked to produce a result adverse to AGW, then people should be concerned that unconscious tweaking the other way may be taking place. On the other hand, if it is not possible to tweak models in the way that concerned the RC reader, then the provenance of the model should be of no concern. I do not have sufficient personal knowledge of models to have an opinion on whether either situation is likely or not. However, I have commented previously on Ellingson’s findings with respect to an earlier generation of models that even models with completely incorrect infrared radiation codes, arrived at the same CO2 impact as other models, which Ellingson interpreted as evidence of tuning, a view expressed in a peer-reviewed publication, cited here on an earlier occasion.
Boris says, September 2nd, 2007 at 7:43 am 190
Ill read the paper when I have time; in the meantime, does it say how long is the observation of observational explantion?, ie: pre-dates the CFC ozone hole (if indeed it is a CFC ozone hole)?, and if so, how long.
Suggests no such thing. Climate reconstructions more than a few hundred years are low-res, becoming lower-res the further back you go. No one knows how quickly changes happened in the past, and therefore, what the sensitivity was.
Nice try (well, actually, not). GCMs are def. not putting anyone out of work; just the opposite, in fact. When & if one is developed that actually has some predictive skill, I will gladly embrace it.
What makes you think someone hasnt? What makes you think that every model run gets published? Maybe the ones that show low CS get discarded for not showing the desired outcome. Ideally, modelers & everyone else working on the public dime should be required to post not only the data and code, but all of the runs as well. In the meantime, we thankfully have that audit pest, Stevie Mac.
BarryW says, September 2nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm – ca. 228:
Hansen is the father of Global Cooling? Better check your refs, mate. I thought it was Steve Schneider when he was with NCAR in the mid-70s.
Hey is this just Silly?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20516847/
Every catastrophe imaginable is being blamed on global warming …
Have the ocean’s really risen by 6 inches over the last 100 years? I hadnt heard that one before – 6 inches sounds like a lot…
Re 225:
The earlier remark by someone about ‘go and produce your own theory if you don’t like the CO2 greenhouse one’ got me reaching for my usual ‘here is the oil sheen/surfactant hypothesis with its great explanatory power and ability to make predictions, see my website’ but instead I went and re-read Salter and Latham’s suggestion of alleviating warming by pumping seawater droplets into the atmosphere, increasing clouds and thus albedo. I found a mention of Weber’s number.
Boris, do the CCMs have any adjustment for the changes in behaviour of low level cloud droplets with varying Weber number? If the surface tension is reduced then initially droplets become more like to coalesce and thus fall out — albedo reduces. If the surface tension falls further then droplet collisions result in breakup, the production of smaller droplets, and albedo goes up.
My theory suggests that the former case is what is happening. What do the models say, or, if the effect is parameterised, what parameters are used to compensate for this unmodelled effect? What science has been done — you know, science, measurement, observation of the real world — on cloud physics above polluted ocean surfaces? The Knights of the Joyous Adventure might still have observations that are relevant.
If you want to meet an elephant in the climate change room, look at the albedo graphs. The albedo drop in the period 1983 to 2002 (no, not cherry-picked, just the one I can find – more data would be welcomed) is the equivalent of a forcing of 7 W/m^2. The greenhouse effect for the twentieth century is equivalent to 2 or 3 W/m^2. Do the models explain this? My hypothesis does — unless the experiments on Weber number have shown something else. of course. I look forward to references but please remember that I have no access to research papers.
I cannot exaggerate how much the ‘the science is settled’ statements set my alarm bells ringing. For example — a case which ties in with my own alternate theory — when the science of reduced C heavy isotope ratios was settled and ‘we’ assigned it to fossil fuel burning, no-one had read the paper in the early 2000s about phytoplankton switching to C4 metabolism (which we know is less fractionating of heavy isotopes and will pull down more of them into the ocean sink). Incidentally, I’d appreciate access to an isotope anomaly graph covering WWII — I predict strange goings on during the period 1939 to about 47.
What other things do we know that are not so? We don’t know.
JF
Curtis says, September 3rd, 2007 at 1:07 am, ca. 231 –
Every time I think things cant possibly get any sillier . . .
I speculated over at the just-retired-from-active-duty Climate Science that some large, well-funded organization is carrying out clandestine research in large group dynamics, ie: how much nonsense will the public tolerate before completely tuning out?, or alternatively & on a smaller scale, how much nonsense will the scientific community tolerate before publicly revolting, or at least shunning its nonsense-mongers.
If the latter, the study can now be concluded, as the scientific community has an apparent endless tolerance for nonsense from its own members.
BTW, my cell phone was acting up today, and Im sure that it was from excess cosmic radiation as a tertiary effect of increased CO2; further, I intend to apply for a large NSF grant to study this grave problem.
Curtis (231), over the last century the oceans raised by around a foot, 18″ in some places … doesn’t seem to have caused major dislocations or millions of “environmental refugees” …
w.
Aren’t these climate models a bit like mechanical parrots? Wind ’em up and they speak! Very impressive… but they still only say what their trainers taught them to say. The wish appears to be that, because the voice is a MECHANICAL one, politicians and the public will mistake it as a RATIONAL one and so place an unquestioned authority in it.
Re: 218
James Hansen received a grant of a quarter of a million dollars and an award from the Teresa Heinz Kerry and her foundation. his acceptance speech: http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6
NASA Chief Downplays Global Warming
Global warming is not a crisis and should not be a high-priority issue for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in an interview broadcast May 31 on National Public Radio. Griffin’s public comments sparked a remarkably insubordinate tirade of criticism from NASA scientist and perennial global warming alarmist James Hansen.
full article here: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=21607
Re # 197 welikerocks
That mythbusters experiment with fuel consumption has a relevant message for experimental design and modelling. The designers omitted that drag rises as a power of velocity, upping fuel consumption rapidly as speed goes up. So windows up/windows down, ac on/ac off is too simple without velocity in the equations. Once we do the tests again at various speeds, we next realise that we do not drive a fixed speeds, so we have to model accelleration as well as velocity and there is no such thing as a “usual” accelleration profile. So we can’t find the “usual” answer from models. We can outfit numerous vehicles with loggers and do future experiments that capture enough data for a probability type approach. But that is in the future.
Many of the posts on CA infer worries that climate models have insufficient parameters or insufficient weight for some of them. If we can’t solve whether cars use more or less fuel with windows/airconditioners complications, how hard is it to model global climate decades ahead?
Larry in 204 says:
One reason for the AGW crowd not to like it is the fact that it may demonstrate that the earth has absorbed enough energy to produce significantly more than the observed temperature increase, particularly if one does, in fact, include the effects of all other heat sources like fission and fusion. Given this, where is the evidence for a water vapor amplification that supposedly will cause a slight temperature increase to become a catastrophic one? As I understand it, all of the models that predict dire climate consequences from rising CO2 depend on that amplification.
Another possible reason for them not to like it is the fact that theyve so heavily invested their credibility in the CO2 theory. It will be very difficult — to say the absolute least — for the AGW advocates to admit they were wrong about CO2 (or wrong about the magnitude of its effect).
But in the final analysis, I see no reason to ignore the simple physics of an obvious and undeniable energy input to the system merely because the advocates of AGW deny it.
Mzed says, in 220:
No, I am not ignoring how fast the earth system radiates heat away from the planet. I merely point out that the rate, though subject to change, is finite — it is not an infinite function that automatically cancels out any heat added to the earths atmosphere. If it were, the earth would not heat up as solar input increases during the transition from winter to summer. But the earth does heat up until the increased rate of radiant loss equals the increase in incoming radiation.
The rate of radiation is a function — among many other variables — of the atmospheres temperature. Adding enough heat to increase the temperature from 288 Kelvin to 288.88 Kelvin will — ignoring all other variables — increase the rate of radiation, but not enough to completely cancel out the increase. It will only attenuate it. How much it will attenuate it is a question for an atmospheric scientist. (Intuitively, I would think the attenuation would be small because the delta T is small.) It is not a straightforward calculation like calculating the energy released from the burning of fossil fuel; if it were, Id have done the calculation myself.
Regarding the building up over time issue, lets try this example. Imagine a house in the winter with a woefully inadequate central heating system. Say on day 1 it has an indoor temperature of 30 degrees F. To improve things, you add one small space heater. By the next morning, it has increased the temperature to 31 degrees F and holding. That space heater could have increased the temperature to some value greater than 31 F, but some amount of the increase was lost because the radiant loss increased.
Since it is still too cold, you add another space heater. The first space heater is still running. By the next morning, the temperature has climbed to 32 F. (Note: since radiant losses are a function of the temperature to the fourth power, the radiant loss from the second temperature increase will be slightly greater than the first; the temperature will stabilize at some value very slightly less than 32F, but for purposes of this example, lets stay with whole numbers.)
Since you are still freezing, on day three you add a third space heater. Now you have three running. The temperature will climb again, again limited by increased radiant loss.
The final temperature your house reaches, after many days of adding space heaters, will not be as great as it could have been because radiant losses went up as the houses temperatures went up each day. However, the total change will in fact be equal to the sum of the individual changes.
Weve added more (perhaps substantially more) than 5.0143E+18 kJ to an atmosphere that has a mass of 5.19E+18 kg and a specific heat of 1.012 kJ/kg.C. Yes, increased radiant losses mean we will not see the full .88 degrees, but those losses certainly wont cancel out this change.
#237 Geoff, exactly. I know there are many other examples of simpler computer models, modelling some aspect of a natural process or process like the AC/window thing coming up inaccurate as well. For instance, just google Artificial Reefs (I have surfers in my family and many engineering projects are on going in places famous for ocean sport to create the “perfect” surf break) and you will find some that have worked out ok and some that have failed.
If you look at a report like this: http://www.coastalmanagement.com.au/papers/SurfSymp2005-PalmBch.pdf
(It will not let me copy and paste the text) page four: read under “figure 4” “Plan for Californian Reefs” it comments on the use of numerical models and even says the cost of utilizing a numerical model is sometimes equal to the cost of the actual structure! And “despite their colorful result” “they do not fully predict with sufficiant accuracy”
You must assume a lot of people are unscrupulous to come to the conclusion that they all throw away models with low CS and are tweaking them only to show warming. Not impossible, but if it sounds like a conspiracy theory…
If your best evidence is Ellingson 1991, then you don’t have much. The entire purpose of the ICRCCM project was to evaluate codes and give a reference for better GCMs–including the physical processes that they must model.
I have to laugh at 236. You complain about Hansen’s politics, then contrast him with the comments of a political appointee as reported by a think tank known for, among other things, climate change op-eds with fabricated quotations in them. Ah, irony.
Re #239 etc., Michael Smith
Michael, what are the relative sizes of the heat energy we have generated vs the heat received from the sun ?
This is a quote from a unrelated discussion on a non science site, that I thought Steve M might enjoy
#241 Boris, I notice you fabricate alot hype yourself. For example I didn’t complain about anything, I just gave a source of information. Where’s yours BTW? Here’s another one: Michael Mann’s personal website. “In the News” pagehttp://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/news/news.html See what publications and websites he chooses to link up to. Included there are some very political think tanks… Mother Jones and The Daily Kos. I am laughing too, but not in a good way. All these men are fair game for my opinion and comment, who are you to judge me anyway?
Re: 245
So sorry, the link for Mann’s website isn’t right: try this one: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/news/news.html
the word ‘page’ shouldn’t be in the address in my 245.
To Larry, Mzed and others who criticized my waste heat idea, I believe you have some valid criticisms — so consider my idea withdrawn until I can do some more calculations concerning the sum of radiation losses over the same period of time that I am summing the energy addition. Thanks for your comments.
Michael Smith,
I liked your hypothesis. I’d want to contribute a bit:
2.3 x 10e+7 W or J/s is the heat emitted by a gasoline motor from driving a car through 10.8 minutes at 60 mph, the temperature of the air surrounding the engine will increase by 12.7 K.
However, the load of heat transferred from the layer of air immediately above the engine’s surface to the outer layers is amazingly low: 3.8 x 10e+4 W.
SteveMc
might be of interest 2 u
Click to access Normals.pdf
Steven Mosher,
Intersting paper! Number 7 is a very important issue, for example:
I’ve always seen something wrong on the IPCC “standards”.
Steven Mosher:
Intriguing article, if it says what I think it does. Also I noted that there are no references to Hansen in the bibliography. Is that a signal? Perhaps, we can het Dr. Guttman to take a look at what we are trying to do here. He may have the story behind the story!
Interesting paper, but it’s 9 years old. I wonder if there’s been any further development.
Larry:
There have been. You can find them by googling for Guttman + NOAA
I’m just a scout. don’t shoot me Custer!
Click to access 2007-schlesinger-et-al-clim-sens.pdf
Abysmal Model Performance on Felix, OR, “Oh yes, we have no Bananas”!!!
The following is a fair use quote from Joe Bastardi….
“The most startling computer snafu so far… the complete ignorance of any model as to how strong this was going to get… not only this fast, but at all. Even the 18z run had no idea, busting by close to 40 mb… on a 6-hour forecast ”
The Hurricane models are about the best available, and they have to be given what is at stake. For example, TPC had Dean’s track with 50 miles or less of landfall 3-4 days out. That’s a pretty good model performance.
All I can say about Felix the Cat is that everyone is darn lucky that he didn’t pop like this 100 miles off Nassau or Miami. But you can probably kiss that Belize waterfront condo goodbye. As for all the climate modelistas, here’s a proverb: pride goeth before a fall.
re 252.
If Hansen ever does Homogeneity he uses peterson method.
I think we need a flow chart of Hansens method as documented by the texts.
THEN I think we need to create an open source package of analyis routines.
re 255. SteveMc… a chapter on climate sensitivity and -.-. — ..—
re: 256 I look here for (overwritten) Felix track models — must save locally to keep record (I didn’t do so for Dean).
http://my.sfwmd.gov/sfwmd/common/images/weather/plots/storm_06.gif
Dean track models were terrible — only 1 (or 2?) had the correct WNW (or really WWWNW) track.
Early on, W-LA & E-TX were in danger of landfall — NOT EVEN CLOSE!
225:
The amount of money Exxon has given to CEI wouldn’t pay postage for Greenpeace.
Exxon admits to giving $19 million over 7 years. That’s a fraction of the annual budget for Greenpeace, Sierra Club, WorldWatch, etc.
RE 260:
I should add that that is $19 million TOTAL contributions; not the amount to CEI.
Looking at how many hundreds of hours you must be investing into this, one cannot but wonder what is the rationale for Hansen not to be open about his research. What does he gain from it? What would he lose if the source code was openly available? What is the justification? It’s tax payers money, and this is one of the central political questions of our times, and we have volunteers trying to work out the methods and research of the leading scientist, because he is not required to be open about it. It’s madness.
When the research has such strong political connotations, you’d think he’d have to be open about it, that it would be required by jurisdiction.
You are doing a great work, but personally I fear the process is already stepping outside the boundaries of science, and the CAGW process needs to be tackled politically before it gets out of hand. I wonder if someone could point me to a forum where the political process of anti-CAGW is discussed in a reasoned manner and in a global context.
Stats heads needed.
So I wanted to start looking at the Homogeneity question. I started here.
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/dochelp/StatTutorial/Homogeneity/
why? Because Hansen is adjunct professor. It’s a Island suburb.
So, I had a look at the Runs Test. Kinda neat.
Modeling Hydrologic Change: Statistical Methods By Richard H. McCuen… had a nice explainatin
This was neat too.
http://statgames.ucr.edu/streakybaseball/statistics.html
My thought was to have a look at
1. Good site “runs test” versus bad site “runs test”
I picked a site with a long unchanged history.
So I started back at ORLAND ( 1883 to present). I got Giss Raw. Looked at the annual means. calc Median
They calculated the number of runs above and below the median ( Tossing out the ties) and
with 122 or so N I came up with with 44 runs, indicating some inhomogeneity ( non random prcess)
Then I looked at the data AFTER GISS adjustments and the number of runs dropped to 37.
Made me wonder.
1. Before “adjustment” all 1221 USCHN site would have a RUNTEST score.
2. After adjustment all 1221 USCHCN sites will also have a RUNTEST SCORE.
what does comparing these two tell you?
BBC transcript
Broadcast date: 06.04.06
HOW DID I GET TO BE SO GREEN AND BLUE?
CAVENDISH: In 1990, Margaret Thatchers speech to the Geneva climate conference was one of the first by a world leader on global warming. She urged other politicians not to waste time disputing the science or blaming each other, and to create a global convention to reduce greenhouse gases. Reading it today, the words jump off the page. She sounds more forthright, and less apologetic, than many of todays politicians. Her supporters say her influence was crucial in getting the first President Bush to sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Where did her apparent conviction come from? Partly from Sir Crispin Tickell, then the British Ambassador to the UN.
TICKELL: The environment was something that did interest her. And I think the fact that the more people expressed opposition to it, especially among her cabinet colleagues, the more interested she became in it. You must remember Mrs. Thatcher was not only a woman in a mans world, but she was also a scientist in a world of classical scholars, lawyers and the rest of them. So she felt always that those were the two things that were her.
http://tinyurl.com/create.php
Tickell was Godfather of AGW
Note carefully comment about position taken in 1990
To accomplish these tasks, we must not waste time and energy disputing the IPCC’s report or debating the right machinery for making progress. The International Panel’s work should be taken as our sign post: and the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation as the principal vehicles for reaching our destination
http://tinyurl.com/2c3jjn
Global warming causes sever weather:
-snip- stuff.
Ok, what the msnbc story misses, is that the model used to generate the bad weather, assumed the earth was 5 degrees warmer. I see one global warming website claiming that the earth is getting warmer by 3.6 degrees per century. So, in 100+ years, Kansas and Texas maybe getting badder tornadoes. Thats a long time to be worried about inclement weather.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20513656/
# 255
Steven Mosher,
From Andronova’s paper I concluded that F is a guess of the radiative forcing. I concluded the same for ÄT, it’s a guess given that the standard T that they considered is not the standard T deduced from the real world. Then, the formula ë trans = ÄT (t2x) / F2x is comparable to Drakes formula, that is, a guess. Why not to use the values from the real world, obtained by experimentation or by observation of nature for knowing the sensitivity of climate? Why not to apply real and well known physic chemistry to the issue? Let me guess hah!
Brent, the Swindle move does a reasonable explanation of why that was. It had more to do with breaking the British coal miner’s union than anything to do with climate. What Thacher was angling for was a reason to go forward with a massive nuclear program, so that the coal miners wouldn’t have the stranglehold that they did.
re 267. Nasif
I would expect to find some account of two appraches to the calculation.
1. A first principles approach.
2. An empirical approach
Anyway, I hope that SteveMc finds an Apprpriate paper. I’ve found a few, Not sure if he
has time to review them. I thought Hansen’s first crack would have been a good jumping
off point
#268
Thanks Larry.. yes I saw that, but I think that was only part of the reason.. However I’d be getting into an area that Steve wants to steer clear of.
Something else I was thinking of:
If i recall, Lindzen has said something to the effect that the answer was given/chosen before the science really started..
NAsif,
have you read this yet
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10787
# 271
Steven,
I hadn’t read it. Thank you so much!
I’ve found some interesting issues:
They argue that the climate sensitivity (CS) has changed with time, from the 5 W/m^2 from Arrhenius to the 1.6-, from Gregory et al. Then they assume that the authors that wrote about the climate sensitivity -before Andronova et al-wasn’t considering the climate sensitivity and that the climate sensitivity has changed in the last five years (from 1998 to 2003): “climate sensitivity is not a constant, but evolves with time as the climate changes”.
In page 13, Michael Prather wrote that “even today we still do not fully understand what is driving interannual-decadal variations in the growth rate of … , observed over the past few decades”, which is a remarkable statement.
I’d question the sensitivity of 1.6 from the work of Gregory et al. because that’s not the number obtained from experimentation. Anyway it’s sensibly lower than the IPCC number (5.35 W/m^2). The real CS for the current Pp of
-.-. — ..— is 0.414 W/m^2
I think that Steve McIntyre will consider this matter.
From:
http://www.dailywireless.org/2007/09/03/underwater-mimo/
RE; 259
Fair enough, I have conflated the TPC forecast, which performed well, with the individual models. The model spread you posted is pretty typical, and the cyclone models, tuned to oceanic/tropical dynamics, can really crash once a storm is inland. Perhaps the lesson here is that a truly accurate forecast involves evaluating the known bias and strengths and weakness of each model’s physics as it relates to the particular circumstances. TPC and the Cyclone scientists cannot be very happy with the Felix situation, and I am sure they know they have dodged a bullet. This time.
re 272:
Nasif you are confusing forcing by 2xCO2 which has been fairly constant at 4 W/m2 (recent value 3.7 W/m2)
Arrhenius’ climate sensitivity was 4-5 K/2xco2 (1896-1906), Hansen 1987 no feedback is 1.2 K/2xco2 which is which is identical to Nir Shaviv 2006.
The August 2007 global surface temperature from NCEP is in (this is a “flash” report and often is revised). The August temperature was the fifth warmest of the last 60 years per their records.
NCEP tends to be on the warm side, with other anomaly estimates typically coming in lower. So, these other estimates may come out in the 6’th to 10’th warmest range. We’ll see.
This continues the flat pattern of global temperatures in recent years.
David:
Good catch. I was looking at the site and found that they still do not show the 30s in true relation to the 90s and 00s. I wonder when they will correct there numbers. Moreover, are these different numbers from the GISS numbers?
David:
Good catch. I was looking at the site and found that they still do not show the 30s in true relation to the 90s and 00s. I wonder when they will correct these numbers. Moreover, are these different numbers from the GISS numbers?
Nasif,
Glad to see you got my -.-. .. joke.
I skimmed Gregory and thought that might make a nice small start at the problem as well
since there are statitical issues and temperature record issue.
on the reference in 271. Did You see that Michael MANN makes an appearence at the conference
to throw his rings into the hat?
He argues that PAleoclimate studies can be used to bound the problem. The comments he got
back were not encouraging.
steven mosher says: September 4th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Besides, -.-. .. is a good idea 🙂
Yes, I read the “revision” from Michael Mann. He would have to “erase” the uncertainties of the proxies and the period 400-1700 AD… again.
# 275
Hans Erren
It’s not me, but the authors of the paper and their formula. They say that Arrhenius introduced a CS of 5 Wm^2 (page 7) and it is “changing” in time by the climate change, “we have become aware that climate sensitivity is not a constant, but evolves with time as the climate changes.” (Italics are mine). Isn’t it absurd?
Hans,
I got it! RF is 0.414 W/m^2. You’re correct in your observation.
Whom ever is interested, I would appreciate some assistance with this question.
1. We were in a Little Ice Age until about the middle of the 1900s.
2. We are not in a Little Ice Age now.
Does that mean temperatures went up, down, or stayed the same?
Does that mean temperatures SHOULD HAVE gone up, down, or stayed the same?
Who determines the “SHOULD” part?
All the temperature data series compute an “anomaly” based on an average, thus the first half has a “negative anomaly” (colder) the second half has a “positive anomaly” (hotter).
Do warmers believe that the natural trend is a line with slope = 0 coming out of a “little ice age”? Or that there was no colder period ending in the 19th century? That is what all the theory of unusual warming is based on, right?
On the contrary, presume one asserted the straight line curve fit of the temperature trend since 1850 has some positive slope. Some amount of AGW could be overlaid on top of it to get to the actual historical trend line.
There must be standards of what represents (statistically) historically anomolous temperature extremes. But these are based on premises that may themselves be faulty. What are those premises?
The similarities to technical analysis of the stock market are unescapable.
re 280
“Its not me, but the authors of the paper and their formula. They say that Arrhenius introduced a CS of 5 Wm^2 (page 7) and it is changing in time by the climate change, we have become aware that climate sensitivity is not a constant, but evolves with time as the climate changes. (Italics are mine). Isnt it absurd?”
That was THE most absurd thing. As best I can figure they want to attribute all feedbacks to
-.-. .. doubling. At least that is the way I read it.
This method of characterizing the system does several things.
1. Lumps all feedbacks into a -.-. .. cntrol paramater.
2. Insures that -.-. .. will be a political focus
3. Insures that control mechanisms are imposed for centuries since the half life of the
deadly poisen -.-. .. is 100 years ( grin)
RE: #216 – NSIDC underreport areal extent. They rely on passive microwave. As a result, they report surface ponds as ice free, and report the 60% concentration line as the ice edge. These are the known errors. There may be other problems, owing to orbital decay and electonics aging of the satellites they rely on for the remote sensing.
Weather, not climate.
Sounds like a good time:
–Antarctica:
Plenty of nastiness of late, weatherwise, on the icebound white continent of Antarctica. At the Vostok station, the low temperature of -80.8 degrees C, or -113.4 degrees F, marked the nadir for the winter of 2007. It is the lowest temperature that I have seen observed anywhere (out of a small handful of Antarctic weather stations). Sunday, Amundsen-Scott station (the South Pole) observed -73.4 degrees C, or -100.1 degrees F–winter`s coldest by 0.1 degree C.
Some day ago, I reported to you the forecasted Arctic cold snap which should hit Central Europe: it is acting just now.
I need your help to evaluate this picture: taken from Munich webcam this afternoon, it really seem snow, but it could be hail or graupeln. In event of snow, I think it would be the earliest ever snowfall for the Bavarian capital (500m/1670ft above sea level, and far from the sea), but it seems too odd even if not impossible (after the shower temperature was +6°C, I saw snow with +5/+9°C with relative dry air – of course no snow on the ground).
#266
Interesting that now even severe weather could be blamed on AGW. Despite what most first year MET students learn about baroclinicity, cyclogenesis and atmospheric dynamics, NASA decides that a warming planet -that is a planet with warming polar source regions- would produce more tornados. As far as North America is concerned, the reasons the Southern Plains has so many severe weather outbreaks is due more to its geography than anything else. If the Rockies ran east-west and not north-south, things would be completely different.
Generally speaking, if the globe continues to warm, polar source regions (both continental and maritime) would weaken, and as a consequence, fewer and fewer polar air masses would penetrate into the middle mid-latitudes. You take that one paramter away, and you essientially remover one very large dynamic in the generation of intense super cells. Without the southern branch of polar front jet, much of the verticle divergence, vorticity, and speed shears necessary for large outbreaks of severe thunderstorms would be missing.
That is not to say there wouldn’t be tornados or severe weather; however, most instances of severe weather occur in dynamic synoptic scale weather patterns. The famous April 1974 torndado outbreak occured in such a pattern.
RE: #286 – Maybe a wintry mix, but that would be pretty unusual at that temperature. That said, what is pictured is a far cry from the last time I was in Munich three years ago, in late July, walking around in my flip flops, and enjoying outdoor Biergarten life late into the evenings. 25 – 30 C during the days and no lower than 20 C min at night. I think I need a beer …. 😉
RE: #287 – I postulate that if anything, there have been more polar outbreaks, penetrating closer to the equator, later and later in spring / early summer, and earlier and earlier in late summer / early fall, over the past five years. It would make for an interesting study. The facts! Just the facts! They are all I want or need! ….. 😉
I have been trying for three days to get realclimate to post this:
Re 241: Boris says: “You must assume a lot of people are unscrupulous to come to the conclusion that they all throw away models with low CS and are tweaking them only to show warming. Not impossible, but if it sounds like a conspiracy theory ”
Actually, one doesn’t have to believe in conspiracy, just in a kind of group think. Check out Myanna Lahsen’s study, Seductive Simulations?, in Social Studies of Science, 12/2005. It concerns the social psychology of climate modelers after several years of observation and numerous interviews. Modelers tend to view their models as “truth machines” and even confuse their models’ with reality. “My participant observation and interview data suggest that model producers are not always inclined, nor perhaps able, to recognize uncertainties and limitations with their own models.” (Emphasis in original).
Jouni Raisanan wrote a review article, Tellus (2007), 59A, 2-29, asking “How reliable are climate models?” He generally praised the models, but noted the models do not agree on all aspects of future climate change, don’t do well with clouds, don’t cover other aspects of forcing uncertainty well, and that “the good agreement between simulated and observed present-day climates … might arise partly because observations of present-day climate are used in tuning models.”
All of which suggests that the modelers need to fully open their models to examination to critiques outside of the modeling community, as Steve M. here and others elsewhere are pushing for.
Rigorous application of scientific procedures, including open availability of all methods in deriving results, is the only real defense against either group think or conspiracy.
People are people — and scientists are human.
Vernon
It is THEATER.
To be fair SteveMc doesnt and cant respond to every post here, so get a grip.
Here is the low down amigo.
1. They couldnt make points by commenting back. so they ignored
2. They needed to tie the game so they commented back.
3. They had something witty to say so they commented back.
The last has yet to happen.
I don’t think Vernon is complaining about Steve not responding, he’s referring to RealClimate censoring his questions.
Mark
re 293.
Sorry. What I meant was this. SteveMc doesnt respnd to every post so dont expect the same
from gavin
Ah, gotcha. There is a difference between the way Steve and Gavin deal with posts they don’t want to/don’t have the time to answer, which you pointed out above. 🙂
Mark
289: and we are still waiting for Solar Cycle 24… Maybe there is a connection?
I’m beginning to think that some folks are overly complicating the heat balance concepts. I think the whole notion of “forcing” by anything internal, such as in the atmosphere is wrong. Only the Sun causes forcing. The atmosphere and oceans only react to forcing by briefly retaining energy. The atmosphere retains heat energy very briefly, before it is radiated to space; and this is highly modulated by convection, evaporation, and clouds. The oceans retain heat somewhat longer. Water in the atmosphere retains considerable heat, and CO2 adds slightly to this retention of heat. But water and CO2 don’t force anything. This ain’t based on thermodynamics, just simple observations.
Jae, “forcing” and “feedback” are control system dynamics terms. They refer to the cause of a system perturbation and a consequent system response, respectively. They’re using the terminology correctly. They probably have the magnitude of the feedback way wrong, but the words are correct.
298: I don’t disagree with this; I’m just questioning the “cause of the system pertubation.” The warming of the atmosphere IS the pertubation, not the cause.
Yes, I think the distinction would be external forcing vs. internal forcing.
Mark
According to the IPCC, there is a long list of “forcings”, including “radiative” (which means greenhouse) and “solar”, and they claim that radiative is the predominant. The idea being that absent the forcings, everything would be stable (which itself is rather presumptuous, but…). In that context, a change in the concentration of one of the GHGs is a “forcing”, even if it’s only leveraging the energy of the sun.
It’s plausible (not necessarily correct, but plausible) that solar forcing is zero (solar output is constant), and radiative forcing is positive. That’s what the AGW forcing claim is (AGW also makes other claims about feedback).
I know I’m qestioning the IPCC and all the “experts.” Perhaps I’m just simple-minded. But I think the situation has been overly complicated and is far simpler, as stated above. All the reactions to the Sun’s input (the only “forcing”) are negative “forcings,” per the second law of —–. El Sol adds energy, and everything tends to get rid of it. Period. The idea that CO2 (or water vapor) somehow add energy to the system is absurd. The radiation goes from one molecule to another, eventually cascading to space.
Face it, all the “feedbacks” are net negative, or else we would bake. If there were a positive feedback to GHGs, water would broil us. A thought experiment: additional solar radiation causes increased water vapor which causes more water vapor, which causes, ad infinitum. Sound familiar? It does not happen. It’s very simple, folks, we are at the mercy of the Sun. Period.
jae:
GHGs are responsible for both positive and negative feedbacks which is why the earth climate is in dynamic equilibrium.
Like a small aircraft, it will fluctuate due to imputs, then settle back down to level flight. The GCMs are modeled like a helicopter, where one wrong move puts you into dynamic roll-over (tipping point) and a smoking hole.
Remember, the basis of any numerical model is the conceptual model. Compared to the moon, the earth’s temperature has been stable for 3.5-billion years.
I think Jae’s arguments are correct. There are limits for the “internal forcing” (I’m thinking on it like “internal operator”). Seen from another angle, there is a planetoid that is thought it’s a frozen celestial body (-212 °C) because it is at 39 AU from the Sun, not by its content of -.-. .. or other GHG (its atmosphere contains 10% of methane). However, it receives only 0.8998 W/m^2 of Solar Energy, while Earth receives 1402.8 W/m^2 of SE. What it would be if Pluto was at the same distance from the Sun than Earth? I’m speculating, but if the total load of energy emitted by the Sun did hit upon Earth’s surface and the Earth had not atmosphere and oceans, the external forcing (or “external operator”) would maintain a blazing planet. On the other hand, put Earth at 39 AU from the “Sol” and it would be a frozen planet, as Hans once said, with or without GHG. I think I understand Jaes premises. KE is induced by EE, its correct, and KE transferred to other mols is transformed to heat that will be transferred to other colder (lesser dynamic) mols by c, con and r. But if there is not activation energy incoming from an external operator, or external forcing as Mark T. adequately pointed, then there wont be KE, nor E in transit, etc.
Nor E for any “internal forcing”…
The point is that someone got an idea, and then created some models where the idea fitted in. Then someone created some “standards” to make the idea more credible. After that, someones comrade plotted some graphs to make that the “standards” fitted in the models. Then, others created numbers that made that the idea, the models, the parameters and the graphs fitted in the original idea. That is the tip of the iceberg that Steve McIntyre and McKitrick discovered and denounced opportunely. However, someone insisted and continue insisting on imposing his ideas by adjusting, taking photos and data from the space, imposing his own interpretation on those photos, data, etc. That someone gives not a chance to others to interpret those data, photos, etc. Only his peer reviewed pals are allowed to do it.
Re #304, Howard
What negative feedbacks are caused by GHGs ?
Re: #302
Add cosmic rays and heat from the earth’s interior to the “input” and I think you’ve accounted for everything.
I am sorry to break your talking about Global Warming…but maybe we have really an historical cold record: it seems that it really snowed yesterday 4th September in Munich, Bavaria, Germany: http://www.spitzohr.de/ “bis der erste Schnee fällt”. A Little Ice Age like event! And Western Europe came from many consecutive warm to very warm months before July-August.
Sorry, it was an error on my first translation 😦 Anyway Arctic air hit strongly Europe, minimae today here down to +5°C at plain and -1°C just below 1000m, snow fallen just above 1000m in the East Alps.
As the scientific establishment, the media and the politicians are all agitated by the minimum sea ice extent news from the Arctic, the Antarctic sea ice extent is rapidly climbing to the 16 million km2 mark: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
This mark has barely been surpassed 3 times during the whole satellite records era so, being still in the SH winter, we may be heading for a record high Antarctic sea-ice extent. I dont expect many news flashes and press releases though.
In the meantime, its funny how the Cryosphere Today site announces each alleged minimum Arctic ice record during the month of August with fanfare. They look thrilled and genuinely surprised. But the fact is that, as soon as they adjusted their plots half a year ago, it was crystal clear that there was no escaping from a minimum record this summer. I forecasted it in this blog back in spring. Climate science at its worst.
Has anyone had any luck getting William Chapman to explain his adjustment? I searched the whole UIUC site and sent him a polite email requesting a link that documented it but got no reply.
jae, you say:
Perhaps an example might clarify your thinking. I used to teach solar technology for the US Peace Corps. You take a large bucket, and line it with straw. Paint a smaller bucket black, fill it with water, and put it in the larger bucket with straw all around. Set it in the sun, and the water gets hot.
Now, as you point out, there’s no energy added … but the water in the inner bucket still gets hot. You can bring it up almost to boiling by covering the buckets with a sheet of glass.
The point is that what surrounds a system (either insulation or GHG gases) can affect the final temperature of part of a system (bucket of water or planet) without any additional energy being added.
All the best,
w.
There’s a big difference between not commenting on a post, and not posting the post.
I thought Vernon was complaining about his posts being blocked.
308,
Water vapors cause clouds, which can be negative feedbacks.
An off-topic question, but I just wondered if any of you could help me, please?
I’m a high-school science teacher and have been trying to find accurate information about global warming to teach my class. I have a TV programme (which some have viciously attacked) called “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which was shown on Channel 4 here in Britain. On it, John Christy states,
“What we found consistently is that in a great part of the planet, the bulk of the atmosphere is not warming as much as the surface.”
Now I know that people have stated that satellite data have had to be revised to agree more with the surface data. Can anyone tell me if this statement is true?
Thank you very much for anyone who can help. 🙂
Mr D,
The real problem witht the satellite data and the surface temps is that the surface temps show warming since ’98, the satellite data does not. It coudl well be that the “divergence” problem is created by Hansen’s prestidigitations, which are the subject of this blog. According to AGW theory, the warming should be greater in the troposphere. That is why this work is so important, not to “disprove” AGW, but to accurately measure it. It may be a small problem that has been inflated by ideologues by Hansen, or it may be every bit as scary as he says, but given the divergence of Hansen’s data with both the troposphere measurements, and Mann’s proxy data, on has to question whether the issue is “settled”.
re # 285 JoeB
Low Antarctic temperatures. Minus 81 deg C at Vostok.
It is easier to think of adding heat than of taking it away. We know that we can add heat to the earth and see it get hottoer. But through not adding heat, and getting colder, is there a “floor” to minimum temperature on Earth?
I
Dropped out, will continue.
I ask if there is a floor to the minimum earth temperature because we use mathematics with certain distributions that assume data are unbounded. Has this been tested at very cold places? How about a list of conditions that could generate record low temperatures? We read of estimates that the globe would be X or Y degrees if there was no “greenhouse effect”. I can only conclude that very low surface temperatures come from downwards movement of cold upper air. How cold does the air get up there? I have seen minus 40 C I think on the Bizjet, but not minus 80.
#314, MarkW, thanks
>> We read of estimates that the globe would be X or Y degrees if there was no greenhouse effect. …. floor to the minimum earth temperature
On Atmoz, there was a thread where he was trying to completely discredit the idea that the greenhouse effect was less important than previously thought. He posed the question “Why is the average temp of earth greater than the moon?”. Several people tried to answer, but were apparently proved wrong and ridiculed, with the alleged conclusion being: See, the greenhouse effect completely explains the difference.
My answer was censored: Earth has a molten core.
Gunnar, IMHO that was done correctly, the tiny heatflow of 700 mW/m2 doesn’t make the difference.
It’s the water and water vapour that makes the difference. EG Compare a desert with a coastal resort.
A small step for the BBC…a very important one for free press (and science): despite environmentalists (politic activists) protests, BBC decided to switch a “climate special” aimed to sensibilise on AGW, because it would not have been impartial, since many “skeptics” accused the corporation of bias toward this issue.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6979596.stm
I prefer not to comment on environmental activists, their ridicolous claims of a few poeple lobby of skeptics fighting against their credo and their believe to be the only and right messiah (not just for climate): this is a scientifical and not a political forum.
Well, since I cannot get Gavin to discuss this or even post this on RC I have a question? Can alarmist tell the difference between fact and fiction? Over on RC Gavin Schmidt made the statement:
Which is little more than a lie wrapped up in ‘estimation’ when the facts are not quite so good for the alarmist position. NOAA/CRN says that a minimum of 100 stations are needed for the USA alone, not the whole NH! To get a higher confidence of the climate, 95 percent, a full 300 stations are needed just for the USA. Saying only 60 stations are needed is just untrue and a climatologist should know this.
Further, Gavin goes on to say that ‘thousands of stations – many times more than would be theoretically necessary’ when this is a lie. The fact remains that for surface stations GISS, where Gavin works, uses Hansen et al (2001) to adjust the station trends. For UHI this means that only ~250 stations are used to adjust the other ~1000 stations within the USA.
Now why does Gavin misrepresent reality like this? Because surfacestations.org is showing that a significant number of stations do not meet NOAA/NWS/WMO site guidance. Studies have found that failure to meet site guidance will lead to 1-5 degree C errors for the station.
The impact of this is that errors at a small number of ‘rural’ surface stations will inject a warming trend that is just an artifact of the errors. Hansen pointed this out in his 2001 paper but does not want to believe it now.
This is even worse for the rest of the world. South America for example, only has six ‘rural’ stations and half of them are islands.
So the ‘accelerated’ warming from instrumented readings that diverge from the proxies and cause the divergence problem could be nothing more than a warming bias due to improperly sited stations.
Oh, and this ‘accelerated’ warming is the reason given that solar could not be the cause of warming, but in the USA, which has the best ‘rural’ stations network, there is almost no warming trend in the 20th century.
I like the bottom line:
#321
Why don’t you try an experiment to test your idea.
Download the Hadcrut3 dataset, or one of the alternative compilations. The calculate northern hemisphere annual mean temperatures from all grid points. Repeat this calculation using a subset of N grid cells, evenly spaced, and compare the results with the first calculation. How low can N be before the estimate of the hemispheric temperature is bad?
>> the tiny heatflow of 700 mW/m2 doesnt make the difference. Its the water and water vapour that makes the difference.
I agree that the water cycle has a major effect. However, unnamed science 101, is that heat flow is related to the delta T between the two objects. You are incorrect in claiming that the heat flow is hard coded to a specific value. That’s why the unnamed science ends with “dynamics”.
319, Hans:
OK, you prompted my favorite question: Why are the 30-year average temperatures at low elevation sites in the extremely arid Desert Southwest about 3 degrees C higher than at similar latitudes in the extremely humid Southeast? Where is the water vapor feedback in the Southeast?
The answer to my question, I think, is that rocks and bare soil absorb and store more heat than humid air and green fields/forests. It’s natures own UHI effect.
Mr. D-
An important point to make to students, in my opinion, is that the checking of individual results is right and proper and in no way allies one with a particular point of view. This site comes in for a certain amount of abuse for being a ‘denier’ site, which it clearly is not.
To site an instructive example: Eddington’s measurements of the apparent positions of stars during an eclipse in 1919 was trumpeted as experimental support for Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Re-analysis of the data, and subsequent attempts in the following decades to repeat this sort of measurement were unsuccessful. Now, there have been other unequivocal supporting data for general relativity, and the theory, as far as it goes, is well accepted. The significant point is that the data collected and presented by Eddington can’t properly be counted in that support.
The sociological aspects of this debate are among the most fascinating parts. A take-down of the ‘Hockey Stick’, for which the site owner is (in)famous (depending on who you ask), is, from the most scientific point of view, not a falsification of AGW theory. It just can’t be counted as support.
I think that what is slowly emerging is that much of what exists in the literature cannot be taken as support for catastrophic warming, which still doesn’t mean that such is not possible, only that it isn’t defensible scientifically to claim that there is a reason to think so.
Science is messy, and rancorous. The myth that I grew up on (and I grew up to be a professional scientist) was that there was a more or less stately progression of theory and experiment that cleanly exposed the truth for all to see. Not at all. If you can use this debate to illustrate how hard science is, how exciting a pursuit it is, and how incredibly precious what we have discovered really is, and most importantly why we must be not be easily convinced but rather the most skeptical when we believe that we have discovered something important,I think you will do your students a great favor.
Good luck. You do very important work.
You must the compare the arid south west with the humid south west. (Nevada and california)
321:
Each week the Idsos at CO2science.org show records for a station in the USA that shows COOLING over the past 77 years. They have been doing this for at least 2 years, meaning that there are well over 100 such stations. Admittedly, this is cherrypicking, but there mst be a LOT of cherries. It would be interesting to pick some of these stations and see what Hanson has done to the records.
327: will do, but I bet the result is the same!
re 321.
Its hard to say where Gavin gets this 60 DOF notion. I suspect it may come from Hansen87
which calculated a correlation coef for pairs of stations… finding that in the NH stations
were correlated with other stations up to 1200km away. The coef. at this distance was .5.
The SH was much worse. with the coef. at .33.
If that is his basis then it’s pretty thin analysis
#326 jae
green fields and forests apart from sequestering CO2 also sequester heat in the same process. The turn both into carbohydrates and with little N2 into proteins. I think the effect is rather small though but moisture provides more negative feedback than what is available in deserts which not only reduces you average temperature but also the amplitude of the variations. I don’t know if it can happen with climate but in an electronic system increasing feedback will drive the average of a varying signal toward the median between the voltage supply rails. Which means that if the average is offset below the median it will increase it while reducing the amplitude of the signal.
#24, JM, there is no need to engage in statistical analysis to determine probability which by definition introduces error. The physical sciences already can calculate this via the psychrometric chart with Enthalpy and grains of water. Ask the meteorologists and the engineers. You only need to engage in probability when you don’t use or know all the variables, in this case we do know the variables. Sensible heat as measured by the thermometer and latent heat as measured by humidity, the psychrometric chart then tells you the total heat in Enthalpy and the total amount of water in the air.
Oops re 335 should read #329
#334, Steven
My old guess, ( http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1603#comment-111575 ) , Shen et al
I think it’s fully reasonable that an ideally located and relatively small number of stations could do at least as good of a job at measuring continental temperature changes as the mass of poorly-placed stations with mysteriously adjusted data we currently have. But that doesn’t mean either method is accurate.
#324 Mr D The Medieval Warm Period did exist, the recent reported accelerated warming is an artefact of poor record collection at rural sites, and the troposphere has not warmed in line with model prediction (Greenhouse warming? What greenhouse warming?. Monckton 2007). Oh dear.
Also, see Monckton’s papers “Climate chaos? Don’t believe it” Sunday Telegraph 2006
#328-329
You can see the effects of desert summer heating quite clearly when viewing a sonding from one of the high desert rawinsonde stations in California. Compare the evening sondings with the morning ones. The morning inversions are quite drastic, with as much as 20 deg C warming at the top of the inversion than the surface. In many case the top of the inversion is less than 300m above ground. The intensity of the stored heat of the desert floor radiates out so intensely that not even adiabtic cooling has any effect. The dewpoint depressions are huge, and the mixing ratios are tiny (only about 1g of water vapor for every 1kg of dry air.
If you investigate another sonding in a more humid, grassy region, the inversions are much weaker, and the mxiing ratios are around 6-9g of water vapor per 1kg of dry air.
One of the more interesting phenomenas occur when a region with very dry lower tropespheric air gets over-ridden by air that has just a bit more moisture. It isn’t uncommon to see late evening very high based showers develope in the late summer over the Northern High Plains. These weak showers produce nothing but virga as the rain evaportates several thousand feet above ground. Once the evaporative cooling takes place, the lapse rate approaches super adiabatic. What ever moisture is present in the lower levels is quickly forced upwards, and in turns produce severe thunderstorms. A quiet, hot summer evening quickly becomes an area of several severe storms as the outflow boundaries produce even more storms.
Michael,
Isn’t that a false dichotomy? Let’s separate the two factors. Fewer stations means more error. For example, the 2003 heat wave in europe, while devasting, was actually a very localized event. When you push in on the balloon in one place, it comes out at another.
The thermodynamic state of the earth consists of land, ocean and atmosphere. It’s already introducing error to measure only atmosphere. Let’s not make it worse by looking at only a small subset of the atmosphere.
Dear Gunnar, “the thermodynamic state” may be “the thermodynamic system“?
SPPI
Gunnar, I agree with you, but I would add “more stations would mean better averages, but not more accurate measurements”. I get the data that I use for my calculations from a station placed at the rural area outside from Monterrey. Our data differ loudly from the measurements released by the International Airport of Monterey station. The rural station is always one to three degrees below the temperatures provided by the station at the IAM. It’s evident that the paved arteries, the gravel dispersed at the sides of the pavement and the buildings have an influence on the inaccuracy of measurements.
#344 LOL Good gosh will it ever end? Sheesh its a run-away anything goes global guilt trip! I am so glad somebody is keeping track of this stuff!
RE: #318 – That is getting down toward all time record territory.
Nasif, I didn’t say that less stations introduces error into the measurements of those stations. However, “better average” isn’t correct. Clearly, the error is in over extrapolating the limited measurements as applying to areas not measured. That is a logic error, not just bad averaging. My point is simple and obvious when taken to the extreme. If we had just one station, say in Hawaii, and assumed that it represented the global temperature, we would be making a logical error. The chances are great that other parts of the earth are warming and cooling.
# 348
Gunnar,
Sorry for misunderstanding your argument. What I’m saying is that we have two options now: IAM that is reporting now 28 C (82 F) and another rural station that is reporting 26.4 C (79.52 F). The average is 27.2 C (80.76 F). However, we’re not considering two stations under the same conditions because IAM station is inside a hot bubble of air caused by artificial conditions against a rural station (RS) that is inside a normal hot bubble of air. The average is unreal.
The artificial conditions at the airport constitute a “forcing”, while at the rural station the conditions are natural, and from the physics viewpoint the conditions at the rural station do not constitute a “forcing” system, but a natural heat conveyor system. BTW, the atmosphere is not a heat isolator. The Earth is not a thermos, no man! Earth is an open system Otherwise we were toasted.
#351 Stimmt, aber er hat es auch corrigiert:
Interesting paragraph in an Idso summary of a study of millenial climate variations:
>> The average is unreal.
Agreed. Perhaps deleted posts rendered the conversation incoherent.
>> The most probable answer, in their words, is that tree-rings rather record the climate conditions during spring and summer”
While this is true, it’s not the most obvious answer: tree rings are not a good temperature proxy.
Here are some physical phenomena involved, which cannot be easily separated:
Sun affects tree growth
Sun affects temp
Sun affects C02
Sun affects Water Cycle
tree growth affects temp
tree growth affects C02
tree growth affects water cycle
temp affects tree growth
temp affects C02
temp affects water cycle
C02 affects tree growth
water cycle affects tree growth
water cycle affects temp
yea, so let’s just get a really ol tree, ignore all these effects, and call it a temperature proxy. All we need is a statistician and we’ll call the science part “settled”
UHI some historical photos for your interest.
http://www.bvnasj.org/SanJose19752006.htm
356: Wow, what a treemendous change!
re 347, 318- Steve Sadlov-
CO2 solidifies at -78.5 C. Does this mean that CO2 drifts are piling up in the Antarctic? What is the temperature distribution in the troposphere at the south pole? Does the Antarctic act like a massive CO2 sink when it reaches these temperatures at the surface, since I assume the troposphere temperature is even lower than this? Have CO2 concentrations in Antarctica ever been reported?
RE: #356 – I do recall it being a s—hole back in ’75, but those photos really do bring the point home. There is a reason we never went down there at that time. What a far cry from Santana Row (not exactly downtown, but you get the idea) and all that! In addition to the overt densification and gentrification, the amount of biomass has gone way up …. impact on nighttime temps are overt. Same deal with most other parts of the Bay Area sprawl ….. UHI has undoubtedly gone through the roof, especially nightime impacts.
I have noticed a disconnect between skeptics and AGW proponents, on this blog and elsewhere. The AGW proponents tend to make plausibility arguments. Comparing the moon and earth to illustrate the greenhouse effect is an example. All of the AGW arguments are plausible, and by this type of argument, if a skeptic doesnt get it they must be either venal or stupid. What the skeptics want to know, however, is how much. How much of the warming might be due to solar activity? How much warmer will it really get? How much of the warming might be UHI-related interference in the instrumental record? If a skeptic pushes on these quantification issues, then it comes down to authoritytrust us, were NASA, we know what we are doing with our models/data/satellites.
Boris,
If the CMs are so scrupulous why don’t they just release their code and data? What do they have to hide?
To ordinary folks outside climate science it looks like they have something to hide. That could be politically damaging the AGW case in the general public. In Britain the polls show that greater than 60% of the population think the CO2 scare is just a dodge to raise taxes.
From other reports I have read the American public is equally sceptical. Even if they spell sceptical wrong.
Nasif Nahle September 5th, 2007 at 12:05 pm,
The atmosphere is a heat pipe. Its working fluid is water.
I think that is a good analogy for those just glancing at the subject.
# 360
Craig Loehle,
You wrote: “…if a skeptic doesnt get it they must be either venal or stupid”
I think it’s not a matter of skepticism, but of real science. If you say that the skeptics are venal or stupid for applying real science, accumulated through centuries on heat transfer, thermal properties of gases, etc., then the venal or stupid are others, not the skeptics. I see youre a troll and I wont feed a troll, so this is my only message to you, who I expect understand the difference between skepticism and real science.
# 362
M. Simon,
I agree! Its like or it is a pipe heat, a conveyor of heat that moves the heat from a warm system to a cold system. WV doesnt need additional devices to do this work and the distribution of heat is realized into a tridimensional system against gravity by means of the evaporation-condensation cycle.
RE: #363 – Um, I think he was just portraying what AGW proponents might say. I don’t think he thinks that himself.
SteveSadlov…
Please, don’t make me feel bad. If what you say is true, I deeply apologize.
LOL.
362:
RIGHT ON! But CO2 is also a working fluid. I’m sure I’m viewed as a crackpot by many, but the idea of POSITIVE feedback from a gas (or anything else) is preposterous. The “basic science” in AGW is simply wrong.
Craig Loehle,
Please, forgive me… I took your message the wrong way. I’m the troll. 🙂
Jae, Simon,
I agree with you on the pipe heat concept; however, I got a doubt, what in the system could be considered the wick?
Nasif Nahle September 5th, 2007 at 10:12 pm,
Rain performs the wicking function, i.e. returning the condensed fluid to the higher temperature area for re-evaporation.
In fact the wicking function of a heat pipe is only required when the pipe is not vertical or nearly so or when the hot region is above the cold region. Otherwise gravity is sufficient to return the condensed working fluid to the hot zone.
Dark matter. 😉
Mark
Loved the quotes in 344. Comical.
Re my posts 318,319. I have looked at temperature variation with altitude and you don’t reach -80 deg C in the standard model until you are about 80 km up. Taking air from there to the surface would give adiabatic heating.
So, you climate people, how can we get minus 80 degrees C on the ground at Vostok. You can’t import cool, you can only take away heat. What is taking the heat from Vostok and to where is it going?
For anyone who still questions the need for Climate Audit:
Schneier on Security
http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com/2007/05/two-us-government-reports-call-for.html
Maybe an idea whose time has come?
Another nice quote:
>> Maybe an idea whose time has come?
Yes, and it should apply to all previous papers. They must either provide all data and methods, or refund our money.
#373
Geoff,
As any 1st year Met student knows, artic airmasses are extremely dense. Looking at a synoptic weather chart over artic airmass source regions during the coldest parts of winter reveals extremely dense “high pressure” at the surface, but very low geopotential heights aloft. That is, in extreme cases, 300mb heights can be as low as 1000ft AGL -the cold air aloft is pulled to the surface. The air masses can be so dense that it actually warms above the 850mb geopotential height.
Normally modified tropical air mitigates some of the cooling in polar source regions, but in cases where it does not, intense cooling at the surface and aloft can create the kind of air masses that we’ve seen this year in the SH. By definition, source regions do not import anything. Artic/polar source regions generate frigid airmasses due to a lack of incoming solar radiation.
Re: #6
So, just how is the temp of the Earth’s Core(s) measured?
Is (are) the core temperature(s) increasing or decreasing?
Should we be concerned?
Does ManBearPig know?
>> So, just how is the temp of the Earths Core(s) measured?
If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
>> Should we be concerned?
God, grant us the courage to change the things we can change (protecting human rights and dignity), the serenity to accept the things we cannot (solar activity), and the wisdom to know the difference.
The earth’s core is warming? Now that’s what I call ‘Global Warming’.
But seriously. Direct warming of the core would have a delayed effect on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
More surface crustal warming could be immediate, but I’ve never heard of any measure of any such thing.
Atmospheric warming directly due to stimulus from the Sun could be possible.
Is there any research on that?
Far more likely is the tie between sunspot activity and climate with a 2 or 3 year delay.
We may be just at the start of a little ice age since this sunspot cycle is very delayed.
>> The earths core is warming?
Did anyone say it was?
>> delayed effect on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
You might be right. So, does this mean you did a differential equation analysis?
>> Atmospheric warming directly due to stimulus from the Sun could be possible. Is there any research on that?
Could be possible? Yes, did some research this morning: at 6:30 am, the temperature was 68. By 9, it was 77. The only thing that really changed was the sun rising.
>> start of a little ice age
A slight cool period is hardly a “little ice age”.
Gunnar says: September 6th, 2007 at 10:18 am
>> The earths core is warming?
> Did anyone say it was?
No one said it.
I was hanging around the thing on the heat pipe almost the whole night and thought that perhaps dust, soot and some gases, like CO2 could act as the wick of the heat pipe. Could it be possible?
>> heat pipe. Could it be possible?
What’s wrong with the idea that rain falling is the wick?
I think we’ve already established that hurricanes are heat engines driven by heat pipes. As for whether other heat transport is by bulk convection or a combination of bulk convection and latent heat, that, I’m sure, is reasonably well known. I remember Lindzen saying that it was mostly bulk convection, but I’m sure that’s readily available textbook stuff.
Gunnar, that’s backward. A wick evaporates. Rain is generally an indicator of saturation, which means you’re condensing. Occasionally, you can have rain fall from one elevation, only to evaporate at another, and never reach the ground (I’ve seen that in Saudi), but that’s rare.
The more common rain cycle moves heat by evaporating at one location (absorbing heat), and condensing at another (releasing heat). Where the rain lands is irrelevant; the heat is released where the condensation occurs (i.e. in the clouds). The vapor (and thus the heat) may or may not move laterally in the process.
It’t that simple.
>> Gunnar, thats backward. A wick evaporates.
Ok, I think we’re talking about different things. I think M Simon is correct when he consider the atmosphere as a heat pipe. As such, rain falling down is like the wick.
However, a hurricane is like a giant vertical heat engine or as a special type of mesoscale convective complex. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane)
# 388
Larry, Gunnar,
And the extreme case is the freezing at high altitudes (snow, hail, sleet). But I want to know if the same atmosphere acts as a capillary filter through which the working liquid (water) is transported or if it is a kind of tridimensional empty and filled parcels in the atmosphere (I mean low pressure-high pressure). Im thinking in empty bubbles dispersed in the atmosphere which work like the drivers of the water vapor, without the necessity of a wick.
Here is a bit I did on the atmosphere as a heat pipe:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/08/big-heat-pipe-in-sky.html
It looks at heat pipe technology and how that idea connects with atmospheric science.
Gunnar said
But I prefer the version that changes the last phrase to:
“… and the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill because they really pissed me off.”
😉
Sorry to be so OT.
384 Gunnar says: >>>Could be possible? Yes, did some research this morning: at 6:30 am, the temperature was 68. By 9, it was 77. The only thing that really changed was the sun rising.
So, extrapolating the trend, (or is that ‘according to models’?) it should go up another 90 degrees by 7 at night! 😀
The reason why the atmosphere isn’t a heat pipe, is that there’s no pipe. There’s nothing constraining the fluid to follow a specific path. It can literally go whichever way the wind blows.
Aside from that, it’s an ok analogy.
393:
Yeah, and if you happen to live where there is a lot of water vapor in the air, the positive feedback will warm it by another 50 degrees on top of the 90!
#394 Larry:
If you have another look, you will realize that most of the convective activity in the atmosphere is in the form of many ‘heat pipes’ constrained by the cellular structure of the atmosphere.
This is especially evident in vortex structures such as tropical cyclones and other low pressure systems, and less obviously is also true on a smaller scale in structures such as single thunderstorms.
Strictly speaking the atmosphere is not like a heat pipe, but it is very like a multicellular structure consisting of multiple heat pipes of various scales all pumping heat from the surface to be released higher up in the atmosphere, and unless your model can somehow manage to adequately account for the ‘heat pipe’ effects which vary from place to place and day to day and year to year, it will soon decouple from reality if you try to extrapolate into the future.
Global temperature anomaly through August:
1979-2007
2000-2007
These are the satellite-derived lower troposphere values from RSS.
# 397
David, my annual cycle graph was made considering the same source (79001-98365), but the anomalies for 1998 does not exceed 80 hundredths of degree (0.8 K).
Here the great heat pipe in action.
I don’t know why the link doesn’t work. Here is the address:
http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/goeseastconuswv.html
LOL. There are apparently a lot of electrical engineering types here. Pray, tell me how you amplify a signal without applying additional power. That is what the climate scientists are trying to do with the “positive feedback” dogma. It violates a certain Second Law.
Steven, RE http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1986#comment-134284
Correlation between nearby stations is clearly not enough; it is easy to generate an example where nearby stations are positively correlated, but the average of records is zero. In that case, you’ll need complete network to see the natural variability. See for example this data
http://signals.auditblogs.com/files/2007/09/t_field.txt
I have no problems in believing that 60 stations is enough, but on the other hand, I haven’t seen a good explanation for that number (Shen94 with Jones gridded UK data is not good enough 🙂 )
Warming of Earth’s core
Have never seen references to this happening.
This year 2004 paper might be relevant. This Russian exercise was the deepest drill hole ever made. There is extensive literature on crustal thermal gradients.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V72-4FY9M75-2&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F25%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e17a318263078b8df784550797c8a7e3”
Vertical temperature profiles are fairly constant world-wide, once below the zone plausibly and measurably affected by surface temperatures (say 200-400 m at most).
Heat flow also varies from place to place for many reasons (like close to a volcano or not) but at Kola an average value of 38 mW per sq m was found. Roughly, the temperature increases with depth about 2 degrees C per 100 m, which is why deep mines have airconditioning systems. Adiabatic heating has to be overcome in the pumped air as well.
Had never heard of McCanney. I saw this on his website:
And you guys think I’m an alarmist. 🙂
You could always postulate that the loss of strength of the magnetosphere has caused a lot of the warming.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0909_040909_earthmagfield.html
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/earth/magnetic.html
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Magnetosphere/earth_magnetic_field.html
http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/geology/a_geomag.html
Courtillot, V. and Le Mouel, J.-L., 1988. Time variations of the Earth’s magnetic field: from daily to secular, Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 16, 389-476.
RE: #388 – I take it you are European and have not spent much time in Western North America. Virga are very common here. Even in normally “humid” locations, due the arid climate zones 100 – 200 miles away, as a cold front comes in, often, the warm sector can have very dry air. The initial bands rain into that, and it never reaches the ground. At some point, there is a high enough rate of precip that this warm sector air gets humidified, then the rain finally starts to reach the ground. In the summer, in our interior, there are frequently convective conditions. Here too, in certain cases, all you get is a dust storm, and the rain never reaches the ground.
Now I understand why Steve doesn’t want us discussing thermo. Some people apparently don’t apply it properly.
Schwartz has a new paper dealing with uncertainly of climate sensitivity: http://www.nature.com/climate/2007/0707/full/climate.2007.22.html
I think this would be good for this group to discuss. RC is poo-pooing it already.
RE: #397 – If it were an electrical signal in a printed circuit board assembly, I would say that we are still experiencing ringing from the late 1990s event (e.g. El Nino).
RE: #399 – (AGW fanatic on)GHGs are the effective equivalent of changing the gain and phase relationships of the circuit to place it outside the safe operating area. By design the Earth’s climate system allows for such operation, assuming said parameters have been thusly tweaked. Sooon, very sooon, we will be outside the SOA, and the circuit will enter into electrical then thermal runaway! Oh, the pain, the pain. William – werrrrrrrrre doooooooooooooomed. (/AGW fanatic off)
By the way, falsification of #409 should be relatively straight forward, merely by reviewing Earth history.
399, here’s your electrical analogy: you have a constant current source. You increase the resistance. Voltage goes up, but current stays the same. Now, replace current with heat, and replace voltage with temperature. More thermal insulation causes temperature to rise with no change in Q. No violation of [t-word].
I wouldn’t doubt it if 90% of Pueblo, CO’s “rain” is actually virga. That place is sooo dry but there are always clouds overhead trying to do something.
Mark
Amplification is certainly due to feedback, and the increased output power (i.e. same output resistance with increased voltage/current depending upon type of amplification), is supplied via some DC source. Standard transistor theory.
Mark
#392 & #393: you guys got me laughing
#394: Larry, Carl has basically answered your objection, but I would add: Replacing a cylinder with a sphere doesn’t really change the concept. This seems to be a great model, not just in thunderstorms, but normally. Sun heats land/oceans. Land/Oceans heat air. Air rises, ie, some thermal energy is converted into mechanical work by expanding the air, and rising. A lot of heat is released when the water vapor condenses into clouds, and rain falls down. The water cycle is completely dominant.
#398: Nasif, very cool. Is that showing a lot of vapor off the eastern seaboard? A bit confused about the color scheme.
#399: jae, I’d love to know which post you were responding to. Perhaps, Steve moved your response to unthreaded, which is much better than deletions.
#410: One would think
#411,
Larry, it’s actually an AC-like sinusoidal voltage source with the bottom clipped to zero (sun never goes negative). The input has periodic pulses. At night, ie between pulses, energy drains back to space. However, the system is more complicated than AGW claims, since the earth is also a heat source. For example, the temperature does not keep dropping from sun down to sun rise. It drops for a while, then levels off.
C02 does absorb IR radiation more than oxygen. So, it’s a slight (.035->.038%) additional “resistance” to heat flow. However, since the temperature levels off at night, the only effect of this change is that the slope of the temperature drop is slightly less. It still reaches equilibrium, just slightly later at night. Therefore, additional C02 cannot either raise the daily high or the nightly low by any significant amount.
# 414
Yes, it’s showing the water vapor from the eastern seaboard. The darker areas are the warmest surface areas, then the color goes gray to white as the vapor goes colder. White areas are clouds at the highest altitude that are very cold. Some vapor areas have a density of 0.73 Kg/m^3 and others have a density of 0.81 Kg/m^3.
-.-. .. density is 6.14 x 10^-4 Kg/m^3
re 408.
Todays Winner!
Funny thing, when I first looked at Daily climate data from USHCN.. I wanted to hear it
Antarctic sea-ice extent has already reached 16 million km^2: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Are we about to have a maximum ever recorded Antarctic sea-ice extent this year (if we haven’t already)? Would be odd to have it in the same year that the minimum Arctic extent is being trumpeted. And definitely not very consistent with a global warming picture.
$35. Can you post up a url that gives the data by (say) month? files for Antarctic and Arctic sea ice
I think I see the source of the confusion. Electronic circuits never use positive feedback, it’s always negative. The AGW theory, as presented by the IPCC, posits a positive feedback. Needless to say, any positive feedback system has some pretty severe limits on the value of the gain, or it will go to a singularity. This is beyond the experience of circuit designers, who never use positive feedback.
But it doesn’t increase overall power, it just leverages existing power.
re 399.
“LOL. There are apparently a lot of electrical engineering types here.
Pray, tell me how you amplify a signal without applying additional power.
That is what the climate scientists are trying to do with the positive feedback dogma.
It violates a certain Second Law.”
Think Night Vision Goggles.
Think PMT. Photomultiplier Tube.
( ducks and runs for cover)
Re 421: imagine an op amp with two positive inputs. Now, feed the output back to one of the inputs through a network that causes the output to go up by three or four for every increase of one in the other input. That’s the IPCC’s feedback model. Now make it nonlinear (for no particular reason). That’s Hansen’s “tipping point”.
This is the Cryosphere Today page for datasets and documentation but they don’t seem to be up to date:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/
re 421
Many types of electronic circuits do use positive feedback I have seen it used to change parameter valuees and create negative resistances. Oscillators depend on it.
>> Needless to say, any positive feedback system has some pretty severe limits on the value of the gain, or it will go to a singularity. This is beyond the experience of circuit designers, who never use positive feedback
No, engineers know all about positive feedback, and spend a lot of time avoiding it, since it means the system is unstable. Any pole in the right half plane causes instability. Once upon a time, a bridge fell down, and another time, Niagara falls went off line, and the eastern seaboard lost power because of a pole in the right half plane. Modern aircraft are purposely designed with instability, and the computer spends all it’s time avoiding the instability. But there is no computer carefully controlling the earth to avoid a runaway. Given the several billion years of history, we can safely assume that the earth is thermally stable.
I hope don’t be erased. BTW, I think that the analogy between Earth’s atmosphere and a heat pipe is correct. The process in a heat pipe obeys to spontaneous natural flow of the working fluid that transports the heat. There is not additional devices “forcing” the heat flow in the heat pipe. The atmosphere behaves the same way, but I haven’t found the wick… yet. I was thinking on electron strings or other particles (perhaps quantum microstates), but I need a plausible formalization for the issue. Any mathematical suggestion?
425, true. Forgot about oscillators. Which just illustrates one of the problems with the IPCC model; the gain has to be in a very narrow range, or the earth would have burned up a long time ago. Stability isn’t generally associated with positive feedback.
dang blockquote function. the last statement should not be blockquoted.
426, Yes!!! Exactly my point. However,
429 still isn’t getting it. There are several things wrong there, but the main one is that day and night don’t matter overall, and the temperature of outer space is 2.7K, which is a damn sight less than the surface of the earth. So radiation out to space happens continuously, all of the time, everywhere, and if the sun shut off, it would continue until the earth cooled to 2.7K. That’s too cold for even polar bears.
There’s no equilibrium, only steady-state.
The positive feedback is just a theory, based on the idea that an increase in temperature causes more water vapor, which causes more greenhouse effect. The empirical evidence of it is pretty skimpy. Richard Lindzen has proposed the “iris” theory, that results in negative feedback, which would be more would consistent with the earth’s history than the positive feedback theory.
And I don’t think even Gavin claims that we understand clouds very well.
Larry, I don’t think we disagree here.
An oscillator’s output is clipped, or otherwise limited. They technically operate in the non-linear region, too.
Mark
426.
being statically unstable in certain classes of aircraft ( fighters) is a GOOD GOOD thing
since we want to maximize certain performance criteria.. pitch rate, roll rate, yaw rate
within certain controllablity constraints…
In AGW theory the climate is statically stable. Left alone, the weebles will wobble but they
won’t fall down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeble
In AGW theory man is an external forcing ( We are outside of nature somehow) and we break eggs.
Gunner – #384
What about the IR from the stratocumulous, moved from down low to high, and lost to space?
What we know about climate history would suggest that the climate system most closely resembles a Schmitt Trigger or a One Shot w/ a damped feedback network.
Change of subject, this is for jae. There is a RAWS site in Sonoma County, at about 2K feet above MSL. Yesterday evening it was in the mid 80s. This AM, the low 50s. There was no frontal passage involved? What happened? The marine layer went from 200 feet to 2500 feet thick, overnight!
re: 418
“Antarctic sea-ice extent has already reached 16 million km^2
I don’t believe this is outstanding in AUG or SEP — my recollection is 18-19M km^2 would standout?
re 238.
Schmitt Trigger. That’s a good one. Bonus points if you use an avalanche diode in the next post.
438: I dunno. Stiff onshore wind?
Quick throw out something like bi-stable monovibrator! Zener diode! PNP junction!
🙂
Global Warming is a negative feedback.
Yeah, the more I hear about it, the more negative my feelings towards the messengers become.
BTW, I actually had someone suggest putting an avalanche diode (or a Zener) on the front end of a receiver I had designed to provide some current limiting to protect the A/D converter from transient surges. That such an implementation generates noise, and I was trying to demod a signal transmitted from a satellite (i.e. low power compared to the noise floor) somehow got lost on the other engineer. The idea was ultimately nixed.
Mark
The end is near
At the other hand snow report from Austria and Switzerland, tourists got stuck.
Maybe they should be renamed “tipping point diodes” in Hansen’s honor.
RE: #441 – No. At the top of the marine layer is a radical inversion. Yesterday, with the depressed marine layer (due to the descending air of a stagnant High) that RAWS site was 1700 or 1800 feet above the inversion and therefore, quite warm. Little no no wind at that time. The high moved, we started to get a southerly surge, aided by a weak cut off low now kicking around off shore, the marine layer drastically thickened to 2500 feet. The RAWS site, now 500 feet below the inversion, was now being bathed in the marine air, ergo, 52 or 53 degrees.
argh … “no no” s/b “to no”
Somebody solder a ferrite bead on Sadlov… jk
#443:
If you want to experience positive feedback, just reverse the wires on your cruise control.
447, uhh….yeah. Actually, one of the many things that went wrong at Chernobyl is that they got out of the normal operating mode, where there was a slight stabilizing negative feedback, and into a mode of positive feedback. The rest is history.
Needless to say, the earth has never done that.
>> What about the IR from the stratocumulous, moved from down low to high, and lost to space?
Sorry, not following you. I think the post deletions has negatively affected thread coherency. 🙂
I insist on the heat pipe, what about a wick consisting in particles, photons or electrons for example? Could it be that the paths of the particles toward and from the surface form a web of something like microtubules or channels? Possibly this idea is not so preposterous, since the condensation of steam in the high atmosphere requires of particles like Helium and Hydrogen nucleons, dust, etc.
Heat pipe is a nice metaphor.
Where does it break down?. Wall effects, pressure drop, reynolds number, flow characteristics.
Models are Metaphors. They help us see things clearly. They also have limits.
Still, I like the heat pipe model
Yes, it’s a good allegory… no wick, no impermeable walls, no superconductors, etc. There is only a working liquid and a gradient of temperature. It has broken my dreams… 😦
#452 nashif
a heat pipe that uses gravity to return the condensed fluid to the evaporator does not need a wick. Precipitation and gravity perform that function and this I think effectively describes rain. No?
You don’t need no stinking heat pipes. It’s just convection. What a crock.
Funny how we have MODTRAN and HITRAN to tell us everything about CO2, but we still can’t figure out the radiation from HOH.
It’s interesting to note that CO2 is 0.3% of the atmosphere, while water is 3.0% of the atmosphere (this is an AVERAGE–a typical day in Miami may have more than twice this much). Water is one of the best absorbers/emitters of IR. So, if HOH is as good as CO2 in absorbing/emitting IR radiation, and AGW nonsense on backradiation is correct, then on a clear summer day in Miami, the radiation from HOH should cook everyone, right? But that does not happen. In fact, it is hotter, on average, in Dagget, California, which has virtually no HOH and is 3 degrees C hotter! Something stinks with the AGW “greenhouse gas” theory, and I WILL figure it out. The Wicki/RC copout that water is “different,” because it doesn’t stay in the air for very long, doesn’t work for clear days.
#454 jae
What does precipitation have to do with convection?
The heat pipe metaphor is useful for bringing the idea of the water cycle and how it works [t-word-ly] to the fore.
Jae, Cheers!
HOH thermal conductivity is 0.0175 at 300.15 K and with density of 0.741 Kg/m^3. Is it useful for your calculations? Well… I see, then you should know that its e = 0.75, thus, its alpha = 4.60 (W/m^2) / [e ó (T ^4/100)] = 1.33 W/m^2. The value 1.6 W/m^2 for -.-. .. is not real because the formula used for obtaining it introduces F, which is an assumed value that you can change at your “local” wish. The real value is 0.414 W/m^2.
M. Simon, Jan Pompe, steven mosher, Jae, Gunnar…
Thank you for the explanation on heat pipes/atmosphere comparison. I was just trying to introduce a bit of pseudoscience. If the atmosphere is not a heat pipe, then it is not a thermos, neither a pressure pot. The two last versions are from AGW idea. 😉
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/08/climatechange
But not to worry,steps have been taken.
A.
>> In fact, it is hotter, on average, in Dagget, California, which has virtually no HOH and is 3 degrees C hotter! Something stinks with the AGW
Jae, not sure if you saw the old 428 before it was deleted. Basically, I pointed out that because of it’s absorption of IR, and the 2nd law, it should actually make the daytime high lower. Your observation above is consistent with this.
#460, the atmosphere is like a heat pipe. Not sure why you don’t get that?
Hey Steve Sadlov,
I saw Steve Bloom’s name calling over at RC
I copied the post, changed the word Sadlov to Bloom and the word denialist to alarmist and tried to post. No surprise, it was censored. I don’t mind censoring the name calling, I just wish it were done consistently. Oh wait, it is done consistently.
462, Gunnar: Someone recently challenged me to compare places in California to make my point (Hans, I think). OK, let’s look at the difference between Bakersfield and Sacramento. Both locations get about the same average amount of solar radiation in July, a whopping 470 watts/m-2 (actually Sac. gets more–475 watts). But the 30 year average temperature in Sacramento is only 24.3 C; whereas, it is 28.9 C in Bakersfield. Relative humidity in Sac is 53 vs 34 in Bakersfield. Now, it looks to me like water vapor exerts a NEGATIVE forcing effect on temperature. (Sac. is 3 degrees higher in latitude, so the comparison is not exactly fair, but Sac is lower in elevation, also–only 8 M cf. 120 for Bakersfield).
# 462
Gunnar,
Where in the atmosphere is the capillarity? The heat pipe works in some way like the atmosphere, but the heat pipe needs the wick, the atmosphere doesn’t. Hence the allegory atmosphere/heat pipe. This is important because for a heat pipe functions properly there has to be a temperature gradient and every time you use the heat pipe the energy will be transmitted from high density to low density. Seeing the issue this way its impossible that the energy moves from low density to high density because there are not available microstates in the higher density region and many available microstates in the lower density region. We say the higher density system is saturated, and it cannot absorb more energy until it loses some of the initial energy to let some available microstates that could be occupied by other states of energy. Well, the heat pipe is a device that was modeled from nature, not the opposite. The AGWists try to make the nature works as their models work. The water vapor into a heat pipe has to get colder (to lose energy) for returning to its initial state, that is, to get back to the heated extreme, but the energy lost will not get back to the hot extreme, but to the colder system attached at the colder extreme of the heat pipe. With this illustration, its clear that the atmosphere cannot warm the surface because the surface always shows a higher energy density than the atmosphere. Some people argue that the atmosphere is warmer than the soil at night, but on the other hemisphere is just the opposite and the air is not static. We should consider that the system at the other extreme of the heat pipe is always frozen (2.7 K) and that the transmittancy of the Earths atmosphere is higher than its opacity.
Ill give you a tip to write your messages quickly Write on a words document, copy your writing and paste it here. 🙂
# 464
jae says: September 8th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Yes, because water vapor needs more calories to rise its temperature by one degree. So the water vapor eats heat crazily and transforms it to latent heat for many hours. The other guy eats much lesser heat and goes to the restroom almost immediately. Compare the latent heat of water vapor (2272 J/Kg) with latent heat of OCO (574 J/Kg).
Sorry, I mistyped the units water vapor (2272 J/g) with latent heat of OCO (574 J/g). Grams, not Kilograms.
Anyway, I think the bottom line is that HOH and OCO provide an “insulation” effect by storing heat in the atmosphere. Since CO2 is only 0.3 percent of the atmosphere and stores less heat than HOH on a molar basis, it exerts a very minor effect. But this is all there is to the “greenhouse effect.” There is no additional “positive feedback” going on, either from water or OCO. The ocean stores far more heat for much longer and it exerts the dominant effect on climate. And we are now seeing the 5-year lag effects from Solar Cycle 23. I hope Cycle 24 gets going soon, or we will have much more serious problems than a rise in temperature of 0.6 C!
Jae,
I agree, except with the proportion of CO2, which is not 0.3%, but 0.034%.
I though it was up to ~380ppm = .038%?
Ooops, yes, 0.03 percent.
A totally unthreaded observation I have been trying to find a home for: On the very day that Pielke Sr closed his Climate Science blog (about a week ago), Googling with “climate science” finally returned his blog in top place, with the longtime favourite RealClimate finally pushed into second place.
Next race on the card: Climate Audit vs Pielke Sr and RealClimate. (It’s currently nowhere in the first ten pages of “climate science” returns.)
Dante Alighieri – inscription over the door to Thermoland.
474, yeah. Unthreaded needs some locktite.
McCall,
380 ppmv = concentration.
707 mg/m^3 = density.
0.034% = percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.
0.00034 atm*m = 344.51 microbars = Partial Pressure.
Total pressure = 0.78 (N) + 0.20 (O2) + 0.00034 (CO2) + 0.01966 (other gases) = 1 bar
Atmospheres with 700 microbars of CO2 favours the growth of most plants.
I’m sorry… I won’t talk anymore about this topic. It’s forbidden in this forum.
jae,
Sac receives a very cooling breeze from SF Bay about two days out of seven over the summer. You also have to toss in the flood irrigation of some thousands of acres of rice during the summer – which may account for that higher humidity rate.
Bakersfield, OTOH, gets good ole Sol with an occasional breath of blast furnace wind that has blown down the west side (desert) of the Central Valley.
A Redding/Sac comparison might be a better match.
477, I don’t have the data for Redding, but based on personal experience, it is not much different than Sacramento. Subtract a degree or two, if you like, the same relationship holds. The bottom line is that the presence of water (lakes, oceans, trees, grass, etc.) tends to reduce average temperatures, not increase them. The whole “water vapor feedback” stuff is crap.
78, cont. I mean that a POSITIVE wate vapor feedback is crap. There well may be a NEGATIVE one. It’s amazing how many “climate scientists”(whatever that is) have ignored basic common sense and simple observations.
479, more cont.
Why is it so hot in Iraq? Iran? etc? It sure is not due to water vapor feedback. Let’s face it, the sand and rocks store heat in the daytime much better than water vapor/trees/green grass. Water vapor “smoothes” the temperature to provide less cold at night (less diurnal variation). But the AVERAGE temperature is higher in deserts. Water vapor INSULATES the planet (as does C02 in a small way). But it does not HEAT the planet. Nor does CO2. The whole notion of positive feedback by these molecules is PAP.
and more
Thought experiment. Compare trapping heat in rocks and sand (very high heat capacities) with “trapping” it in CO2 and HOH. The sand releases it slowly; whereas, the air sends it to space quickly by convection. The heat exchanges on this planet are primarily convective exchanges, not radiative exchanges. That must have escaped all the eminent IPCC scientists.
From “Hansen Frees the Code”:
Anthony, what brand of hard drives are you using? That seems like an excessive failure rate.
I manage servers with a total of about 20 drives and I’ve had one or two failures in the last several years.
I buy Seagate drives because I’ve tried several brands and they have given me the best experience with reliability.
P.S. I can probably chip in occasionally to help fund the Wiki server although I suspect the current CA server could handle it fine, at least for now.
# 481
Yes, Jae. The soil has an absorptivity of 0.82 to 0.92, depending on the composition and the wavelength. Its emissivity is almost the same. Its total emittancy is 423.4 W/m^2 at 300.15 K. Compare it with CO2 and have a good joke.
Slashdot has a piece this morning about libraries defending open access — a policy of NIH and other funding agencies requiring release of content after a short delay — which should be interesting to CA readers. A couple of points of special interest …
From NIH …
From the Rockefeller University Press:
#481 and on: jae and Nasif,
Another point of contention, the new climate models and or theories also seem to forget the small tilts and wobbles our planet experiences as it orbits around the sun. Earlier climate models (before the hysteria) seem to take them into consideration like:
Simulation of the 14-Month Chandler Wobble in a Global Climate Model (pub.1989)
And in turn, the ocean and the weather also effect these wobbles as in… not only does axial tilt affect climate, but climate affects axial tilt by changing the Earth’s roundness which in turn changes how the sun’s energy actually hits the earth I would think…and also like: ice building up at the Earth’s poles, would have altered the Earth’s motion in the past as in: Ice age wobbles shaped climate etc etc etc! These things do matter whether they like it our not. However the Algores will brush all this away in conversation faster then you can say the word “wobble”! (It’s part of the basic training they receive in the “How to Talk to a Skeptic” seminars)
#461 A
What utter b*****ks! WTF paid for this? Not me I hope.
KevinUK
Nasif Nahle September 8th, 2007 at 9:25 am,
You really need to do some research on heat pipes.
Go slow here:
Vertical heat pipes with the hot end “down” do not need capillaries. Gravity assist the flow of the working fluid from where it condenses to where it re-evaporates.
You can look it up.
You know I hate to say this because I really like you but RTFM. I have given you links to my blog post. From there you can find lots of links to the science and technology. It is like you didn’t even look. BTW my view was triggered by the recent Roy Spencer piece at CS.
It is really important to get the whole picture. The atmosphere is a blanket. It helps hold the heat in. The water vapor acts like a heat pipe equalizing temperatures between the surface and the upper atmosphere (accounting for the adiabatic cooling as the warm air rises). So you might say we have a wet blanket.
It is about balance. The “greenhouse effect” is not the only thing going on. In fact in my article I don’t dispute it.
My explanation is not definitive. There are a lot of different details. It is just an attempt to get people who are not paying much attention to look at the water cycle and not just “-.-.” “- – -” “..- – -” OK?
#461 and #486
Dr Corell – a true believer
KevinUK
jae September 8th, 2007 at 9:36 pm,
The water vapor feedback stuff is not crap. They just got the sign wrong. Probably the magnitude as well.
Higher delta Ts between the surface and the upper atmosphere (accounting for lapse rate – or adiabatic cooling) increase the rate of heat transport – with some delay.
BTW the latent head of -.-. – – – ..- – – is not a factor since it exists as neither a solid nor a liquid under earth surface conditions. Water – water vapor – ice of course does.
Let me simplify all that. Increasing water vapor in the atmosphere temporarily acts as a blanket. When the blanket gets wet enough heat transport actually increases due to the water cycle.
i.e. after a pulse the system peaks and then damps. The system is probably under damped for short pulses (atmospheric heating) and over damped for longer ones (ocean/land heating).
490: I agree. You will note that I got the sign right in # 479.
490, if you look up Lindzen’s “iris effect” it’s a little more complicated than that, but you get to the same bottom line.
jae,
Yeah, I saw that after I posted. I should have paid more attention. Thanks!
Larry,
I looked at it once and just skimmed the first page. I guess it is time to get educated. Thanks!
To answer Erik Ramberg on recent unprecedented Arctic warming. I suspect you are not aware of any temperature history prior to 1972. Here’s an anecdotal demonstration that warm periods in the Arctic are in fact not unprecedented but have occured within the 19th century. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history So how did a team of men in a wooden boat navigate the Northwest passage in 1905 if it was ice bound? http://www.framheim.com/Amundsen/NWP/NWPassage.html If it was unprecented for the Northwest passage to be icebound, then how do you explain it was transited several times in the 1940s?
494: Interesting articles and good catch. But you do realize that it is DIFFERENT now, because WE are causing it, not Mother Nature and her Sun.
# 496
Solar Science,
And as Dr. Shaviv said, at lower solar activity , a higher condensation of water vapor in the atmosphere:
http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/goeseastconuswv.html
# 497
Gray scale:
Black for cloudless areas, warm surface.
Gray from darker to lighter for water vapor concentration. The lighter are denser cold areas.
White for highest very cold clouds.
The great heat pipe in action, infrared global image:
http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/globalir.html
You’re right, M. Simon. The thermal principle is the same.
Larry, #501
I assumed the distribution costs would be only effected by inflation, since it is included in my overall COE costs, and I am not proposing new, but only replacement of existing facilities. However to get the 65% vs 60.5% I had to assume some costs that IPCC did NOT include in what I posted. They had a -1c to 1c cost. I used 10% since the cost of this sequestering is so large versus transportation costs, 10% as a SWAG. Doesn’t make sense, it shows (or gives a glimmer to their thinking) that they are shoving certain uncertainity to the lesser cost factors. In a budget, I don’t do this. It is done to reduce the estimated cost, since obviuosly CO2 sequestered transportation will cost something. In laymen’s terms it almost certainly means the you should use the high end of that 40% to 70% increase in cost of electricity number. As typical of IPCC, they just don’t come out and give straight info. You have to dig and dig and make assumptions. And then I would assume, you would have to put up with what Steve does when you have to guess, and they say you are wrong.
496: New site?
M. Simon,
Ive some problems trying to understand some points on the similarities between Earths atmosphere and heat pipes.
A greenhouse slows heat transfer by convection, that is, by currents of the fluids inside the structure (that could be a building, a car, a glass pot, etc.). Actually, radiation and conduction are not obstructed in a greenhouse.
The Earth has not restrictions for conduction, convection and radiation, which are the three modes of heat transfer. Convection, which is impeded between the inner space of a greenhouse and the surroundings, has no limits in the terrestrial atmosphere. Thus we cannot say that the Earths atmosphere is or acts like a greenhouse, neither like the inner space of a greenhouse.
On the other hand, a blanket covers a space impeding the flux of heat by convection between the space under the blanket and the surroundings, but allowing the flux of heat by conduction and radiation. If the atmosphere acted like a blanket, then the flux of heat by convection would be obstructed by the atmosphere; however, this is not the case on the Earths atmosphere that is attached to the Earths surface, but it is just the opposite, that is, the atmosphere favors the emission of heat from the surface to the outer space through the three modes of heat transfer.
A heat pipe needs a wick, and I agree that the Earths atmosphere doesnt need a wick because the gravity fills the function of the wick. However, the heat pipe needs two extremes, one hot extreme and one cold extreme so the flux of heat can be given from the warm system to the cold system.
Considered like a whole, the Earths atmosphere lacks of a cold end. The stratosphere warms up as it grows in altitude. We could think that the stratospheres higher layer is the system towards the heat absorbed by the surface is conducted by the atmosphere behaving like a heat pipe; however, there is another colder region which is outer with respect to the outset layer of the stratosphere. Actually, the stratosphere breaks the heat pipe system due to its low gaseous mass. Hence, we can infer that the momentum of the molecules included in the stratosphere is high.
The next layer, above the stratosphere is the mesosphere, which is colder than the stratosphere, then we could think that the heat pipe system restarted there; however, the gaseous mass in the mesosphere is lower than the gaseous mass of the stratosphere, so we cannot infer a restoration of the heat pipe system in the mesosphere. The outer end of the heat pipe system would be the thermosphere, which temperature is 1,727 °C. Then the heat pipe would be inverted, with the hot extreme at the thermosphere and the colder extreme at the troposphere.
Those are my problems to understand the similarities between the atmosphere and a heat pipe. Would you clear them all?
Steve McIntyre, A. Watts,
Yes, I know My post is weird Please, sweep it out. Im sorry.
Hey Solar Science, still no sign of those links you thought you were including.
#504 Get your daily sun updates here 😉
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
The ice quake story is much more complicated. The statement that these have never occurred before in NW Greenland is somewhat misleading sonce these type of quakes are relatively newly observed phenomena (Ekstrom, G., Nettles, M. and Tsai, V.C. 2006. Seasonality and increasing frequency of Greenland glacial earthquakes. Science 311: 1756-1758.) Idso et al provide a quick summary. Even within the terms of the Elstrom study, the numbers suggest that this is not a Greenland wide phenomenon.
The ice quake story is much more complicated. The statement that these have never occurred before in NW Greenland is somewhat misleading sonce these type of quakes are relatively newly observed phenomena (Ekstrom, G., Nettles, M. and Tsai, V.C. 2006. Seasonality and increasing frequency of Greenland glacial earthquakes. Science 311: 1756-1758.) Idso et al provide a quick summary. Even within the terms of the Ekstrom study, the numbers suggest that this is not a Greenland wide phenomenon.
Bjorn Lomborg has a new book titled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. Michael Crichton reviewed it on Amazon. Other people have posted reviews and its interesting that so far everyone has either given the book 5 stars or one star. Many of the reviewers seem to be using it as a platform to make a statement about global warming, rather than an actual review of the book. A couple of the critical reviews tend to ignore the book to the point that I wonder if they actually read it. Ill post my own review on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble after Ive read the book.
One thing so far, Cool It is extensively documented. There are 34 pages of notes and a 40-page bibliography. Contrast that to Gores An Inconvenient Truth which was no notes or bibliography. Even Gores earlier book, Earth in Balance, only contains chapter notes giving general sources for the information he presents, but no notes for specific facts he cites. I guess Gore thinks we should just trust him. Gore has turned down a challenge to debate Lomborg. Smart on Gores parthed get his butt kicked. But I think he prefers preaching to debating on this issue.
[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307266923?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0307266923] Crichtons review of Cool It[/url]
[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0307266923&pdf=y&z=y&bnit=H&bnrefer=TOP] Barnes & Noble – Cool It [/url]
Let’s try those links again:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307266923?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0307266923
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0307266923&pdf=y&z=y&bnit=H&bnrefer=TOP
>> Considered like a whole, the Earths atmosphere lacks of a cold end. The stratosphere warms up as it grows in altitude.
But the top of the troposphere is always the cold end. The troposphere is the heat pipe.
Flabbergasting – so the CO2 effects are “basic physics” !
Yet it is the most common error closely tied with the error that the climate “science” is settled .
The radiation transfer alone (a small part of the overall problem) is a problem of matter/radiation interaction .
It is quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics of the worst type .
A huge amount of assumptions is necessary to try to numerically integrate the resulting equations in the different atmospheric regions (collisons prevail , radiation prevails , both are of the same order of magnitude) .
On top there is scattering , particles and density effects and everything variable with altitude , position and time .
Yes the CO2 variation has an effect like about any variation of about anything but that statement is trivial – quantifying it is all but basic .
That is why S. McI will never find this holy grail of a document of 100 pages explaining why X% of CO2 variation entails Y% variation of temperature .
The radiative transfer alone would take 10 pages of equations and 500 pages of numerical results combined with a discussion why neglecting this or that effect doesn’t change the conclusions or why perturbative treatement may be legitimate .
The very common assumption of local thermodynamical equilibrium is obviously false because the temperature is changing all the time and by non negligible amounts at all time scales (from an hour to one year) .
The Earth is emitting all the time a different amount of radiation than what it receives and the space pattern of the local imbalances is also chaotically changing all the time .
The fact that the sum of positive and negative imbalances integrated over the whole space more or less cancels in average over long periods of time (but not too long !!) implies nothing about the dynamics because the dynamics isn’t governed by averages and especially not in highly non linear systems .
Basic physics indeed …
The above quoted person has probably no clue about quantum mechanics or any physics for that matter .
# 510
Gunnar,
Something makes me think that it could be a double heat pipe.
#512,
Nasif, that thought occurred to me as well, until I remembered that the stratosphere doesn’t have the requisite water.
The outer layers (stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere) would act like a second pipe by which the heat enters from the space through one layer, conveys the heat through the middle and lower layer, and goes out from another layer, similar to the path of water through a condensation tube of a nuclear power plant. Something has to take the energy out from Earth, except for IR that doesn’t need matter to be transferred. The interaction between IR and matter takes place basically where the matter is more abundant, that is, in the troposphere (with 75% from the total amount of matter contained by the whole atmosphere). The heat emitted by the excited matter in the troposphere goes out through the outer layers of the atmosphere, but the main transfer mode by which it is transferred to the outer space is by radiation. The ozone layer is an absorbent of energy, like a poly-backed absorbent lab paper. The set stratosphere-mesosphere-thermosphere constitutes the complete kit with one absorbent side facing down (stratosphere), a middle layer impermeable to some wavelengths (ozone layer), another absorbent layer facing up (mesosphere) that absorbs IR from the Sun, and an outer layer facing out (thermosphere).
# 513
Gunnar,
I agree. Anyway, the gradient of temperature from the troposphere to the mesosphere is from high temperatures at the troposphere (about 17 °C) to lower temperatures at the mesosphere (around -95 °C), perhaps by adiabatic effects. The problem is the thermosphere We have to call Michael Mann to get rid of that inconvenient layer, hah! I’m joking, ok? 😉
511, Tom: I think you are right here. I’ll bet that the 2.5 C figure Steve keeps mentioning is derived from some simplistic model. The AGW crowd must be ashamed of it, since nobody seems to be defending it.
I also don’t think radiation from GHGs plays a very big role in temperature. Convection runs our weather systems and climate, IMHO. It is my understanding that you can’t even find a significant radiation effect in a greenhouse, where convection is all but prevented.
” 511
Tom Vonk,
You wrote, “The very common assumption of local thermodynamical equilibrium is obviously false because the temperature is changing all the time and by non negligible amounts at all time scales (from an hour to one year)”.
I agree, the th equilibrium is obviously false. The thermodynamical equilibrium would maintain the states unchanged from one second to another; however, the temperature changes from one second to another and the thermodynamical homogeneity of the system is just a dream. The systems and subsystems are different and their thermal properties differ one to another. Even the system possesses inner states that vary from one subsystem to another one.
Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist) was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning.
Link to audio.
Geez, rant much? Don’t like “basic”, huh? Perhaps I should have said “undisputed in the literature.” Fine with that? If not, please cite.
RE: #494 – Actually, when Amundsen sailed the NWP, he was icebound at times. It took a couple years. Now, if you really want to look at the past, look at the 1930s, and, the MWP.
RE: #481 and others – jae, you also need to consider the role played by semi persistent High pressure centers in the cases of both the SW US as well as Iraq. In areas that are dominated by these features, absent any local or semi local cooling as a result of sea breezes powered by the sea surface-inland air thermal gradient, the subsiding dry air (it’s dry due to moisture removal due to monsoonal / local convective action in the SW quadrant of the high and in the areas to the west of the High) gets compressed, which further lowers the RH while simultaneously heating the air. In places like the Eastern US, it’s a totally different regime. The general trend is one of rising air, and humidification.
Geez, Boris, why don’t you provide a citation that shows that “basic physics.” It may be “undisputed in the literature (or not),” but it appears also to not be “shown in the literature.” Steve Mc has been asking for some exposition of this “basic physics” for a year or so, and so far just the sound of silence. Just continually saying it doesn’t make it true (except in certain circles). LOL.
“We are from the consensus, and we are here to assimilate you…”
-Boris of the Borg
We’re living in the Holocene Epoch, when the temperatures can fluctuate by three degrees Celsius above and three degrees Celsius below zero. A change of 1.5 degrees is not an anomaly, but a minimal fluctuation suitable for the Epoch on which we are living; even if the temperature fluctuations went up by three degrees. There is not any “Global” Warming, but merely local normal warmings. I’m a “denialist” of bad science. 😉
Whatever the causes it does make me chuckle that before one of the coldest summers on record we were being told about ‘global warming’ now we’re being told about ‘climate change’ and our government is intent on taxing us out of our bad habits. I don’t think my government cares – they just want the money. Am I being too sceptical?
Weather, not climate …. within the next 24 to 36 hours, there is a reasonable chance that snow will fall as far south as International Falls, MN and the northern shores of Lake Superior. This is a strikingly similar scenario to last year. Except, this time, the winter-like weather may strike even earlier. Perhaps, certain locations in the lower 48 will experience what was experienced in the Northern Tier of states late October 2006, as early as late September.
It’s in the lit and SteveM knows it. It’s just not wrapped up pretty for him.
#527 and #528,
Maybe we should all drive around the block several times each night, and light some bon fires?
If you’re so cocksure, go fetch it. It’s put up or shut up time.
>> Its in the lit and SteveM knows it. Its just not wrapped up pretty for him
for him? Hey, your AGW idea is costing norwegians about a billion dollars this year. This isn’t about SteveM. Countries like Norway and Canada, which are not as smart as the US, China and India, but more honest then Germany, France and Russia, are the ones going to actually pay for Kyoto. Those people who have alleged that there is real science behind this AGW idea better provide a “wrapped up pretty” scientific hypothesis. Law suits might be possible.
Okay, Larry, start with Ramanathan and Coakley, 1978. You can work your way both forward and backward from there.
Boris,
I can show you many “basic physics” treatises exposing OCO poor capabilities to retain heat, and many “basic paleontology” treatises demonstrating that the current is not an unusual global warming and that the climate has changed every second of existence of our planet (some 4.8 billion years). What’s in the lit?
524: SS: I suspect you are correct in explaining WHY the temperature differences exist; i.e, the energy goes into evaporation. What intrigues me most is the fact that there is no increased warming in regimes where there is plenty of water vapor. It suggests to me that GHGs do not produce any significant positive feedback. Marine influences could explain some cooling in, say, Miami. But it is hard to make a case for marine influences in, say, St. Louis or Memphis.
I can show you many basic physics treatises exposing OCO poor capabilities to retain heat, and many paleontology treatises demonstrating that the current is not a global warming and that the climate has changed every hour of the existence of Earth (some 4.8 billion years). What’s in the lit?
from 1998: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/RamAmbio.pdf
Boris, uhh…..no. You make the claim, you produce the evidence. You’re not a lawyer, are you?
As you know, we’ve been there before, Boris. There is nothing there supporting a 2.5 C temperature rise. Nothing new since 1978?
re Gunnar, cc. Tom V and Nasif: I have not back tracked the thread to see if issues on satellite measurements have been addressed, but the attached reference was interesting. It discusses how radiance and gases are estimated from satellites, a superset of the RT theory under GCM’s. Chunking up and down the url chain gets other interesting stuff.
Click to access atbd-airs-L2.pdf
Lots new, but you guys want a neat summary of research conducted in the 1950s by Plass and et al. So don’t complain when we have to get into the wayback machine.
#537, as expected, it’s at best weak, and at worst, fundamentally flawed.
It’s your job to support your assertion. It’s not Steve’s responsibility to make your case for you, and it’s not mine, either.
It’s not my job to save you from ignorance. If there is any dispute about the physics, you should be able to find it in the lit. Otherwise, you have nothing.
Boris the prosecutor: “Your honor, the defendant is obviously guilty. Go look it up. It’s in the law books somewhere”.
Judge McIntyre: Mr. Boris, could you meet me in chambers?
537, Gunnar: I suppose you’ve noticed that the “theory” described by Ramanthan in your link is based on computer modeling and flawed “basic physics.” Moreover, it is not being supported by the observations. For example, the heating is not taking place at low latitudes as he predicted. So I don’t think the theory is sound. Ramanthan’s “basic physics” consists of the very simplified idea that IR is somehow “trapped” by the GHGs and is re-irriatiated, thereby causing an enhanced “greenhouse effect.” It sounds reasonable on its surface, which is why so many people believe it. And it is OK, as long as “greenhouse effect” is defined as “insulation.” But the idea that radiation is being directed back towards the surface is absurd. The increased radiation keeps the air warmer a little bit longer, thereby providing a better “blanket” (insulation), but it does not radiate back towards a WARMER background. As you know, that is impossible as a net effect (probabilistic).
Re 545
Guys,
Boris is up to his usual troll stuff [no offence to the Scandinavians]. Best ignore him as he has nothing to add to the mix.
546, Nobody said that there’s net radiation downward to the surface (or at least I hope nobody’s saying that). But some radiation in the reverse direction is part of the overall mechanism. It’s just like in a hurricane, over 40% of the molecules are moving against the direction of the wind.
RE: #535 – East of the Rockies, most humidity is a result of 3 things. Local transpiration, local evaporation, and, mT air masses from the Gulf of Mexico. Also, other than areas affected by Chinooks, strongly subsiding air masses are never there for long. But you are correct, if H2O were a positive feedback, I’d expect not only extreme things to be going on in humid climates, but also, the behavior in the tropics to be quite different than it has been. So the theory goes, warmer air holds more moisture, and, is less likely to experience the conditions leading to precip. That is not what appears to be happening. This prophecied tropical aridity is just not happening.
RE: #547 – Boris, if you do not cease and desist, we will ask Steve M to allow this thread to go to 1000 posts! 👿
This stuff about 2.5C warming for -.-. .. doubling is getting pretty frickin TEDIOUS.
If they had anything they would unzip and whip it out. They are journal junkies.
Remember those guys in grad school? The guys who read everything and knew nothing?
remember how they debated every little point by citing something “you havent read”
WELLLLLLLLLLL. Pony up. whip that semenal source paper out… taps foot..
Pass the Bode plot.
Boris: The problem from my standpoint is that we have back-of-the-envelope and/or general statistical discussions, like Gunnars #537 Ramanathan reference, or that of Gerry North, http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1851#more-1851, on the one hand, and on the other we have GCM computer code, including all sorts of ad-hoc and undescribed parameters for nucleation, convection, convergence, energy balance, etc. There are no publications, including IPCC, to show how we get from the general arguments to detailed global calculations. In particular, it took me months to find out that GISS uses correlated K non-LTE, not Schwarzschild as described in several places, and I have yet to see a description of how it moves gases around. To be even more particular, how many basic schemes are there for convection in GCMs? How many empirical parameters are there? — same question for nucleation, etc. We all know there is way more stuff in the computers than is in the 20 year old papers, for example non-LTE RT, but what is it, where did it come from, and how was it validated? The great long lists of references in IPCC only tell what might be, not what is.
Excuse my ignorance. can anyone tell me if this Hansen code stuff affects the temperatures shown in a country like New Zealand?
As opposed to internet junkies?
You see, journals is where this stuff was published. When they developed the radiation codes based on military research. In the 1940s and 1950s.
Undisputed in the literature, like I said.
Check out Plass’ work, mosher.
re my 555: hit the submit button too early by mistake. Another completely empty comment from Boris.
# 553
Paul,
Im afraid New Zealand will not affected by Hansen flawed algorithm because New Zealand is at the SH, and he says that the data from Southern Hemisphere stations are negligible and by this cause the SH stations have been dismissed for his calculi. 😉
We know there are radiation spectra, and we can even identify compounds with it. What we don’t know is what that means about higher temperatures at the surface of the planet. As I understand the history, Arrhenius was shot down on this subject and it was forgotten for awhile. Then Calendar picked it up again and nobody has bothered to shoot it down again.
# 557
And Hansens word is AGW law -for Boris for example, but not a physics law, but an anti-physics law.
Hansens code eliminated almost all the feedbacks from the SH The reason? Well If Hansen would included those SH negative feedbacks, there would not be global climate change LOL
Don’t feed the troll.
Boris says:
Ok, then show us WTF you’re talking about. None of this “it’s in there” stuff. C’mon. Cough it up.
560, not feeding it, just showing the world that it’s all bluff and bluster, and in reality doesn’t know a proton from a crouton.
RE 554.
Sorry dude I had to work with that junk when we tried to model/verify
IR sensor performance for heat seeking missiles.
JUNK. Utter junk.
Next.
548, Larry: then just what is the significance of the 3.7 W/m2 that IPCC keeps throwing around for the effect of doubling OCO? Where is that extra energy “felt?”
More on the inadequacy of GCMs WRT clouds. ORDER OF MAGNITUDE issues.
Jae – that number is probably not far off. It translates into a temperature increase on the order of a degree C. However, it’s just as likely that feedback decreases the overall effect as increases it. Google “iris effect lindzen” for how negative feedback can happen.
The weakest link in the AGW chain is the assumption of positive feedback. And it is just an assumption.
re: 418 & 436 … the AUG’07 data shows 18.0M km^2 from http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_extn_hires.png
Although it could still change, it looks like a normal Antarctic Ice Extent year.
Larry, can you not find the works of Gilbert N. Plass on your own? Too difficult a research task? I sympathize.
mosher, the world is in dire need of your expertise! Write up why it’s junk and submit it to the nearest journal forthwith. I am actually very concerned about this. It is obviously junk because you said it in ALL CAPS. The reason I say write it up is because, while I am a reasonable bloke who accepts bald and evidenceless assertions on the internet, some crazy weirdos like verification and actual arguments. Go figure, huh? 🙂
# 564
Jae,
I know your question was addressed to Larry; however, Id like to contribute with the answer. I only want to know the method used to get 3.7 W/m^2, if the -.-. .. Partial Pressure in the atmosphere was taken into account and what was the absorptivity that the IPCC considered for obtaining the total emittancy of the CO2.
I hereby declare Boris to be unserious.
Sure are a lotta declarations around here. Nothing’s comin’ of ’em though.
Boris, I’m familiar with Plass’ articles. They are not up-to-date treatments of the topic and do not meet the criteria requested. It is incomprehensible to me that no climate scientist has written an authoritative treatment of the #1 climate issue in the 50 years since Plass. I am reluctant to accept such a sweeping indictment merely on your say-so.
566, Larry. One degree means that the sensitivity is about 0.2 deg/watt m-2. I guess I can accept that, considering Shaviv’s and Idso’s conclusions (as well as work I have done using 30-year average climate data for the US). I’m familiar with Lindzen’s work and now think that feedbacks almost certainly have to be either negative or benignly positive. Otherwise, we do have a tipping point issue, and it would have happened long ago. So the IPCC can only get to 2.5 C by assuming very positive feedbacks? And this must be the results of climate models, since nobody seems to be able to find a physical explanation (except Boris, who has all the answers).
573, That’s my understanding, and the beauty of a computer model is that they can use it to hide behind (or at least that’s what Hansen thought he could do forever), so in fact, even if the primary greenhouse effect is “basic physics”, the specifics are all hidden in the models, and we can’t verify the “basic physics” which Boris refuses to identify.
The GISS episode is a metaphor for the entire IPCC process, where they hide the most basic of things inside models, and then declare the science “settled”. And then they get upset when the nosy little dog finds the little man behind the curtain pulling the levers and yelling into the microphone “I am the great and powerful consensus”.
re 568.
Sorry Boris, I am bound by both security and confidentiality
agreements. Clearly you know as do I that these military studies were classified, and while the
original studies may be declassified, subsequent work is not.
Someday I will explain to you how to make a plane invisible. Not today
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-23.htm
Steven Mosher, what are these “radiation codes” Boris is babbling about? Is this the IR absorption spectra of CO2? what’s the big mystery?
576
Let me guess: MODTRAN?
577, Ok. It’s not obvious why that’s “codes”, but I’m guessing that the term refers to computer code. Or is that their idiosyncratic way of describing the spectra?
MODTRAN is a computer program (written in Fortran btw) that calculates things like scattering by ice particles and water droplets and absorption and emission spectra in the less than 1 to 50 micrometer range. It uses moderate spectral resolution data as opposed to line-by-line codes (programs) that use the higher resolution HITRAN data. I think that qualifies it as radiation code(s).
Re#527
Strange But True:
Great Britain, New Zealand, Thailand, Netherlands all have Ministries of Climate Change. Great Britain already has Climate Change Tax. Thanks to the tax, GB avoided deadly Global Warming, at least last summer.
The next thingy to do is to create the Ministry of Scientific Consensus.
The Netherlands don’t have a ministry of climate change, we have an ex-activist minister of environment.
BTW Power generating companies in The Netherlands are planning to build new coal power plants.
Hans,
It doesn’t sound like anyone there is too worried about rising sea levels.
£86 Million of UK taxpayers money is to be wasted on climate modelling by the UK Meteorological Office, according to the Today programme this morning (thats the same programme that recently interviewed Steve). See listen again.
This is the same Met Office that predicted on April 11 that this was going be a hot summer, then repeated this on May 30, adding that rainfall would be average or below average, just two weeks before the disastrous floods of June 12-15.
Now that the CET data is available we can see that in fact 2007 was in fact the coolest summer in the UK since 1998. Yes I know climate is different from weather, but what faith can we have in an organisation predicting climate decades ahead that can be so wrong over a two-week forecast?
Hans:
Sorry, my Google search for ministry of climate change returned couple of hits mentioning Ministry of Climate Change and Industry of Netherlands.
As for coal power plants, Netherlands is not alone. Germany is quietly pursuing program of building of at least 25 coal-fired boilers for baseload electricity generation ranging at 600-800 MW each. It is about equal to installed electricity capacity of Belgium. It will be mostly pressurized fluidized bed units, quite clean in traditional pollutants, but carbon sequestration is not even on the table. Coal is thought to be imported from Poland, Russia, South Africa, or elsewhere.
For base electricity generation, it is Big Coal or Big Nuclear. Renewables just do not cut it.
The Dutch government wants to impose an Ecotax on flight tickets of 25 Euro per ticket. Meaning a family of 4 have to pay a staggering 100 euro extra per trip for their holidays…
http://almanak.overheid.nl/categorie/45/Ministeries/
We have a ministry of Economic affairs (Economische zaken) dealing with industry.
and a ministry of housing, planning and environment (VROM)
so your sources are wrong,
At present we have a social democrat/christian democrat coalition, so there is more emphasis on environmental issues.
#583
How do you know it will be wasted? Surely the whole argument of this site is that we need better models and better observations?
re 576. he’s refering t this… see RC
The breakthroughs that finally set the field back on the right track came from research during the 1940s. Military officers lavishly funded research on the high layers of the air where their bombers operated, layers traversed by the infrared radiation they might use to detect enemies. Theoretical analysis of absorption leaped forward, with results confirmed by laboratory studies using techniques orders of magnitude better than Ångström could deploy. The resulting developments stimulated new and clearer thinking about atmospheric radiation.
Boris says:
Well Boris that is not the way science is done. So either you are not into science or you are into that special branch where the rules are different. You know. Climate Science. Where assertion trumps evidence.
re 576.
the studies are covered here:
Basically if you want to design an IR seeker that sees a airplane
understanding the transmission of IR at various required some
observations at various altitudes, so the aiforce did bunch of
observations which designers could use.
It doesnt address the issue 2.5C for C02 doubling. Like I said.
The work is covered here
Weart, Spencer R. (1997). “Global Warming, Cold War, and the Evolution of Research Plans.” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 27(2): 319-56.
590:
I would prefer if people in here do not call IPCC Climate Science as “Climate Science” and make unjustified generalization in this regard. IPCC is quite a special case in science community. This link shows that not all climate science is junk science (as you do know already ;)).
Nah, keep up the good work! I really do enjoy reading your articles in here!
591, so it’s an empirical set of transmission-over-a-distance measurements on a wavelength-by-wavelength basis. Not exactly a complete GHG model, but logically part of it. Presuming, of course, that you can back out the basic parameters and then extrapolate it over the entire atmosphere at different density and temperature. When you say it’s “junk”, does it overstate absorption, understate it, or just have a lot of bad data?
re 579
There is also a version called LOWTRAN thats what we used.
heres a critique:http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997SPIE.3062…22M
So basically if you are designing a supercruising small fighter ( see my reference
to the YF23) the “military” study was alluding to have several limitations
( ok that more fair than calling it junk)
So have at it Boris.
You have to put a space before http, or it doesn’t form a link.
>> The weakest link in the AGW chain is the assumption of positive feedback
It is a weak link, but the weakest? There is some pretty stiff competition.
#583 >> Yes I know climate is different from weather, but what faith can we have in an organisation predicting climate decades ahead that can be so wrong over a two-week forecast?
Well, they are quite different analyses. However, the fault is on the AGW side. They claim that weather/natural events are examples of AGW, like 1998. And in this case, they predicted a hot summer for Britain. You can be sure that if it had been hot, they would have attributed it to AGW. So, what’s good for the goose, is good for the gander.
[snip]
–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)
Gunnar, ‘splain exactly what violates the second law and how.
re 594.
Junk was a bit extreme, but Boris has never had to work with the stuff.
Sorry about the link, but the paper will give you some idea of the limitations.
I can’t access the paper unless you make a link out of it, because a chunk in the middle of the url got chopped out.
#352 Larry:
A rhetorical question:
At what point will all of the “coincidental” agreements (surface ,satellite, borehole, etc) convince you?
There is no such thing as perfect data or 100% certainty in science. At some point you have to go with the odds.
I’ll respond to your rhetorical question with a real question: where do you get the idea that satellite data agree with surface data?
Thanks Larry, I’m glad you asked. Here are a couple of references:
Wikipedia: Satellite Temperatue Measurements
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/31/223318/86
(sorry for the lack of a link, but the spam filter doesn’t like it)
(while I don’t agree with a lot of the politics at Gristmill, this series is well documented and referenced)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997SPIE.3062…22M
Abstract:
The infrared signature of an aircraft is generally calculated as the sum of multiple components. These components are, typically: the aerodynamic skin heating, reflected solar and upwelling and downwelling radiation, engine hot parts, and exhaust gas emissions. For most airframes, the latter two components overwhelmingly dominate the IR signature. However, for small targets–such as small fighters and cruise missiles, particularly targets with masked hot parts, emissivity control, and suppressed plumes- -aerodynamic heating is the dominant term. This term is determined by the speed of the target, the sea-level air temperature, and the adiabatic lapse rate of the atmosphere, as a function of altitude. Simulations which use AFGL atmospheric codes (LOWTRAN and MODTRAN)–such as SPIRITS–to predict skin heating, may have an intrinsic error in the predicted skin heating component, due to the fixed number of discrete sea-level air temperatures implicit in the atmospheric models. Whenever the assumed background temperature deviates from the implicit model atmosphere sea- level temperature, there will be a measurable error. This error becomes significant in magnitude when trying to model the signatures of small, dim targets dominated by skin heating. This study quantifies the predicted signature errors and suggests simulation implementations which can minimize these errors.
Think about that, Then reread this
The Northrop/MDC YF-23 employed planform shaping with extensive blending, the latter technique used to advantage with the large B-2A. Blending has the major strength of not compromising high speed aerodynamics, the blended airframe offering very low drag by avoiding vortices which may be produced by a faceted geometry. In addition to RCS reduction through shaping, the YF-23 also employed carefully shaped exhausts to conceal the engine hot end, yet another technique developed during the B-2A program. The unusual ‘diamond’ planform of the YF-23 is a 2 major lobe design, as all major edges fall into groups of two parallels. The result of the low observables techniques was a major reduction in aircraft detectability by radar, and in the YF-23, also detectability by Infra-Red Search & Track (IRS&T) systems. This will radically shrink the usable envelope of hostile radar guided weapons and in the instance of the YF-23, also heatseeking weapons.
#597 >> Gunnar, splain exactly what violates the second law and how.
I will not be dragged into another forbidden discussion. However, I’ll just point this one little item out, it’s one of many, many impossibilities:
On page 189, he says: The surface-troposphere system should warm (in response to the excess energy [in the colder upper regions of the atmosphere]).
He is asserting that there is a heat flow from colder regions to warmer regions, which violates 2nd law.
601, I’m not sure who “he” is on page 189 of what document, but there’s nothing about the fact of temperature increasing before it decreases that violates any laws of [t-word]. The heat is absorbed in the lower atmosphere, causing the warming, and then drops as you get to space, because eventually all, I repeat all, of the energy that’s absorbed by the earth has to eventually be rejected into the cold darkness of space.
It’s not a simple conduction problem, and even if net heat moves against an apperent temperature gradient over a short distance, over the longer distances, it’s moving with the gradient. No violation of any laws.
Gunnar, in fact, let’s take that a step further. If what you’re saying is true, not only is the CO2 GH effect invalid, so is the H2O effect, and blackbody calculations say that the earth should be frozen over. Is that what you believe?
Looking at temperatures fron an engineering point of view (i.e. a practical one) is different from the mathematical point of view. Calculating temperatures to 3 digits beyond the decimal point is not practically meaningful. The practically meaningful unit is about 1 degree – Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin where right in choosing the degree as the measuring unit (and not the milidegree).
The second thing an engineer does is look at the accuracy of the measuring instruments and the methods employed in recording and reporting of the data. From all these you estimate an error margin. The error margin, in our century old global temperature records is, by my guesstimate, no less than 3-5 degrees.
So, the century long global temperature trend, as reported by Hansen (errors, and all) of about 0.6 deg Celsius is way below the error margin, and therefore insignificant. Correcting his errors, solving the puzzle, may be much fun, but it does not matter much, because the trend, as reported by Hansen is already insignificant. (Of course, if you discern a 2 or 3 degree trend up or down – that’s another story). The fact is that the quality of the temp record does not permit such a fine resolution in trend measuring.
Same for Mann. Unrelated to his mathematical errors: the claim that you can measure anomalies by proxies a thousand years back to an accuracy of, say, 0.5 degree – is insane (at least from this engineer’s point of view).
I am following with great interest and fascination the proceedings here; keep up the good work!
Larry, you write:
This statement is false. A small fraction may be converted into net chemical potential. Second if you ignore the word eventually, there will be net accumulations of heat in the air and oceans. Indeed, this is the global warming.
What Gunnar fails to understand is that when people say, eg, that the back radiation from the (colder) troposphere causes the (warmer) surface to warm even more, they are not really asserting a net flow of energy from cold to warm regions.
Before GHG increase, radiation from the surface to the troposphere exceeds back radiation by X. After GHG increase, radiation from the surface to the troposphere exceeds back radiation by (X minus a little bit). ie. net flow is always in the same direction, but the small change in rate results in the warming of the surface.
This is the solution to Gunnar’s conundrum.
Here is the link to actual satellite data – from Remote Sensing Systems:
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
Measurements of earth’s surface temperature from satellite shows warming much like surface sensors.
The problem is that GCMs don’t predict warming at the surface, they predict warming of the atmosphere at altitude of roughly 8-12 kms. In that region, the satellite data is at great odds with the models – the warming is negligible.
That has always been by biggest problem with how the global warming argument has been framed – when warming is talked about, it is usually never specified where the warming is.
#356 Jacob:
The error margin for a *single* thermometer from 100 years ago may be 3-5deg. However, when you average N independent readings (from N thermometers), the standard deviation is reduced by the square root of N.
Therefore, even if there were only 100 thermometers available, the error in the mean would be only 0.3 to 0.5deg.
The errors are even smaller because we are dealing with a temperature trend instead of with absolute temperatures.
604, for crying out loud. The accumulation over a year’s time is essentially nothing compared to the amount that comes and goes over that same year. What’s the point of this nit-picking?
#357, PabloM:
Please read the Grist article linked above. There *were* inconsistencies between the statellite data and climate models, but they have been resolved — in favour of the models.
Quoting from http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/31/223318/86 (linked above):
Weather not climate ….. yesterday, I’d mentioned the possibility of snow down to near the US – Canadian border. That scenario looks less likely due to lack of moisture at the right times in the right places. However, assuming the forecast holds, a nonetheless fairly dramatic event seems to be emerging. In terms of snow, it now appears that a very large swath stretching from central Alberta to West Central Quebec may experience a light, but quite cold and dry snow event. Furthermore, by early next week, a major outbreak of Arctic air will likely have flooded the eastern half of the US. Particularly affected would be the entire Great Lakes region and the Northeast. Summer left the house a while ago in that neck of the woods. Eventually, a series of cold fronts will cool the air all the way down to the shores of the Gulf and Western Atlantic.
# 597
Larry,
Im not Gunnar, but the explanation is plain. You have a plate at 50 °C surrounded by an atmosphere at 25 °C. Entropy of the plate is higher than entropy of the atmosphere, hence, the gradient of temperature is from the plate to the atmosphere. Suppose that it is true what some catkillers say that the energy can flow from the cold systems to the warm systems (first violation to the second law) and that some heat is transferred to the hot plate. If it was true, then the atmosphere would heat up the plate (second violation to the second law) and the plate would heat up the atmosphere (the heating up of the surroundings from the warmer plate is the way that we have always observed). Is it plausible from the Th viewpoint? No, because the molecules of the plate have a higher momentum than the molecules of the atmosphere, what the molecules from the atmosphere do is to reduce the speed the molecules of the plate diminishing the temperature of the plate, not to the contrary. If you have a ball that is displacing at 10 m/s and it collides with another ball at 50 m/s, would the ball at 50 m/s increase its velocity or its velocity would be decreased? The catkillers say that the ball would increase its velocity, which is that one should sum the half of the velocity of the lazy ball to the velocity of the faster one (third violation to the second law of thermodynamics).
605, correct. The actual heat transfer, since it’s primarily by radiation, can occur over considerable distances, and the lapse rate becomes irrelevant. You have something that’s analogous to quantum mechanical tunneling. In reality, you also have convection, which can move the heat over long distances. As long as the driving force over long distances is in the right direction, the heat will move outward. It has to, or there would be no way for the heat to get out. And that would be a real violation of the laws of [t-word].
Yes, Larry, and the Earth is not an isolated system.
>> Im not sure who he is on page 189 of what document
Ok, you missed the context. Someone asked Boris for the description sought by SteveM. He replied that Ramanthan has provided this. In #537, I posted a link to one of his papers that explained the whole AGW idea.
>> temperature increasing before it decreases
If that’s the claim, that would be fine. It’s the claim that the cold stratosphere can warm the surface.
>> all, I repeat all, of the energy thats absorbed by the earth has to eventually be rejected into the cold darkness of space.
No, that would violate the 1st law: Delta Esys = q + w. The work term is not zero. Esys is not constant. Therefore, assuming 1st law is correct, radiative balance is falsified.
>> so is the H2O effect
No, since the H2O is in the lower troposphere and dominates it. It acts as an insulator, lowering the day time high temperatures and increasing the night time lows. In the troposhere, there is significant mixing, which allows convection to work, hence the name, troposphere. The troposphere acts like a heat pipe, facilitating heat transfer. Ramanthan asserts that stratospheric OCO heats the surface.
>> blackbody calculations say that the earth should be frozen over. Is that what you believe?
Plancks black body equation is insufficient for calculating thermodynamics, and shouldn’t be used that way.
Cause and affect backward. If anyone claims the cold stratosphere warms the surface, he’s an idiot. The cold stratosphere may be an indication of of a process that warms the surface, but I’m not aware of anyone saying that it causes it.
John V.,
Of course there is no perfect data in science, nor ever 100% confidance in results. This is why it is so critical that error margins are calculated and published. The problem with all the global surface temperature averages reported thus far is that none of them publish an error margin. I’ve seen guesses from Hansen that they are +/- 0.1 degree C, but I have not seen a rigorous analysis to support that proposistion. The fact of the matter is that none of the temperature measuring instruments used come anywhere close to that level of accuracy or precision, and the Law of Large Numbers won’t help you here because the data is almost certainly not iid. When proper error margins are not provided the reported result, which in this case is the global temperature trend, can not be interpreted in any scientifically meaningful way.
This is not to say that Hansen and the others are not doing the best they can with lousy data. They may very well be, but that’s entirely irrelevent to the issue of whether the results mean anything. It is completely possible that the data quaility of the surface temperature record is too poor to discern any trend that may exist regardless of what kind of analysis techniques are employed. The failure to admit this possibility is IHMO, one of the biggest holes in the entire AGW hypothesis. Until we come to grips with this data quality issue I can’t take AGW too seriously and all the supporting data won’t keep the hypothesis from collapsing if you remove the surface temperature data.
???
Re 567:
Mccall: that 18 km^2 figure from NSIDC is not directly comparable to the 16 km^2 I mentioned above from Cryosphere Today. Likewise, NSIDC estimates the current Arctic sea ice extent to be 4.24 km^2 while the CT area is only ~3 km^2.
As I understand it, even though both use the same data, this disparity stems from how each processes it. Both assume a given pixel to be covered by ice if the ice concentration is over 15% but while the NSIDC extent is calculated only through the outer boundaries of the sea ice so defined, the CT area multiplies each pixel by the actual percentage of sea-ice concentration, thus giving always a lower figure (if Im mistaken here I hope Steve Sadlov will correct me).
In any case, according to CTs calculations this year were near (or at) the record Antarctic sea ice area for the whole satellite images period, as visible in this plot:
A very rare event, to have both maximum and minimum sea-ice records in each hemisphere practically at the same time.
605: I think you are correct. I changed my mind (again).
I decided I don’t like the blanket/insulation analogy, either. Blankets limit convection, unlike the atmosphere. A blanket acts just like a greenhouse: it only retards convection and has no effect on radiation. (Ironically though, it increases conduction, especially if it’s wet. A dry down blanket is best, because it provides a lower amount of conduction and convection. But it doesn’t materially affect radiation, either).
So the way I see it, warming from GHGs occurs as follows: we have these extra CO2 molecules in a column of air. They absorb incoming or outgoing IR, from the Sun, the Earth, or from each other or water or whatever. That makes them less dense, so they rise to a cooler level. They now have to release some of that radiation, one way or another (collisions, radiation), which makes them sink and repeat the cycle. So they are pumping energy upward, keeping the air above slightly warmer, causing a chain reaction effect downward, which makes the whole column of air slightly warmer. Thats not a blanket or a greenhouse effect, just a slight ambient warming.
But the increased heat at the top of the atmosphere increases the rate of release to space, which dilutes the effect somewhat. The question is how much warming is produced in this way. IPCC says 3.7 Wm-2. Is that correct?
>> What Gunnar fails to understand … net flow is always in the same direction, but the small change in rate results in the warming of the surface.
But what Steve Milesworthy doesn’t understand is 1) averaging inputs is an incorrect analysis, See #415. 2) C02 changing the rate of heat flow from the surface doesn’t change the max day time high, nor the nightime low. It only changes the rate at which the temperature drops from the day time high to the night time low. oco, unlike water, doesn’t evaporate and condense, which absorbs and releases a great deal of heat. so its effect is limited to a slight variation in time constant, ie the night time lows are reached slightly later.
>> primarily by radiation, can occur over considerable distances, and the lapse rate becomes irrelevant
A stray photon may travel a “considerable” distance, but all the molecules in the atmosphere are radiating. The 2nd law holds for any mass greater than a few pico grams. Radiation is not exempt.
>> In reality, you also have convection, which can move the heat over long distances.
Not in the stratosphere, which is what Ramanthan of the Scripps institute is claiming is heating the surface. His words are clear, he doesn’t make the distinction that Milesworthy is making.
>> As long as the driving force over long distances is in the right direction, the heat will move outward
The driving force, like you say, is outward. However, Ramanthan claims that this cold atmosphere can heat the surface.
>> If anyone claims the cold stratosphere warms the surface, hes an idiot.
This proves your not, unlike Ramanthan, one of the primary AGW scientists.
# 614
Jae,
¦¤T = [¦Á] ln [(CO2) ¡Þ / (CO2) s] / 4 (¦Ò) T^3
I suppose 3.7 W/m^-2 is alpha in the formula above this paragraph. The value has changed since Arrhenius from 5.35 W/m^-2 to 1.37 ¨C 4.2 W/m^-2 in the last assessment of the IPCC. It was named ¡°effective sensitivity¡±. From the units, it is the Total Emittancy of the CO2. If it is the TE, the value is incorrect because the current Pp of the CO2 is 0.00034 atm*m.
IT’s amusing that Boris is citing Ramanathan to me as a source. In a previous thread,
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1771#comment-117869 I gave this reference to Boris.
616: ?? can’t understand some of the symbols and writing.
re: #608 Nasif,
You are incorrect, it’s quite possible for energy to be transfered from the slow ball to the fast one. The only requirement is that the conservation of momentum is maintained. In the particular case of identical, frictionless balls (and we’ll just look at the two dimensional case to simplify things) the easiest way to look at it is to draw a line through centers of the balls at the point of contact. Then draw the perpendicular at the point of contact. Then make yourself a little drawing analyzing the incoming momentum (or velocity) vectors of the balls along the two lines. Now sum the momentums along the line through their centers, then divide the result in half and give that half to each ball. Finally reconstruct the momentum vectors for each ball. Note that momentum can’t be transfered perpenticular to the point of contact (at least not with frictionless balls). If you’ve done this properly you’ll see that if the faster ball has less momentum along the direction of the point of collision than the slower ball, then it will receive part of the momentum of the slower ball. Now the faster ball will, by construction, be moving faster than the slower ball in the perpendicular direction, so it will still have the faster overall movement, but that’s not what you said. You’re apparently assuming a one-dimensional case, and that’s not valid if we’re looking for transfer of energy from one ball to another. Indeed, things get even more complicated in the real-world 3D case.
I’d like to see that in context. I know that some of these people (Weart is notorious) aren’t very good communicators, and say things that seem to be saying one thing, when the intent is another. He may have been trying to say that lower temperatures in the upper troposphere are an indication of surface heating. If he actually said they cause surface heating, he’s smoking something.
If you’ve seen Monckton’s latest paper, he shows why the AGW “fingerprint” is absent, because we’re not seing the temperature profiles predicted by the models.
# 615
Gunnar,
Please, drop me a message to my E-mail address.
# 618
Yes, it’s a mess…
Delta T = alpha [Ln (CO2 current / CO2 standard)] / 4 (sigma) (T)^3
359 – I am reading the gristmill site you reference – it links to on RealClimate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170
I want to read everything before I say anything, but –
it is interesting that the papers on satellite temperature and radiosonde temperature corrections brought both sets of observations into line with the GCMs all were published the same week and the instrument types required same type of correction (both had diurnal errors).
And several of the people involved in those corrections (Hansen , Schmidt etc.) are the same people whose “corrections” are showing up as questionable through Climate Audit.
I want to look at it more though.
Re #359,
The satellite corrections did not bring them in-line with model prediction. It removed about one-third of the temperature difference between satellite and ground observations. The models are still way off.
Reid — oh, ok, if you say so.
Do you have a link or reference for any skeptics?
Reid — I apologize for the sarcasm. There’s no place for that in a serious conversation. But a link or reference would be appreciated.
OK…. No more thermo! We’re at friggin’ 622 … make that, 623 posts. Y’all know how this works, saben? No thermo = new thread. 🙂
And no more CO2 spectroscopy / spectrophotometry / quantum mech either! 👿
358, that’s only if errors are Gaussian. That’s not the problem with surface measurements.
Quoth the raven, “nevermore” (on this thread).
John V:
“Given the results of the current versions of the data sets and experiments presented here, we see that all (except RSS and one RSS-adjusted sonde experiment) indicate trends for the tropical lower troposphere that are less than that of the surface (+0.125 K decade−1). This yields trend ratios of troposphere versus surface of less than 1.0, which is smaller than the ratio of 1.3 generated from climate model simulations for this time period.”
The above is from Pielke, Sr.’s site= http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/04/13/new-paper-on-the-assessment-of-tropospheric-temperature-trends-by-the-university-of-alabama-research-group/
and taken from this article= http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2005JD006881.shtml
RE 358.
Do you want to argue that Temperatures are taken from independant and identically distributed
random variables?
Not even an eigenvalue of a wavefunction?
re: #624 SteveS,
Well I don’t know about other messages, but mine wasn’t “T” it was strictly from my sophmore physics class “Introduction to Mechanics” of 42 years ago.
RE: #626 – In the case of CO2 quantum mech purposes, no! Please, no!
Yo sí sé… I vote for a new thread.
Naw, let’s go for a thread of record length.
Dave Dardinger… Yours complete the fourth violation of…
I stated I believe that given the error margins, the 100 year trend, as reported by Hansen et all, (0.6 deg)is insignificant.
That doesn’t prove there is no GW, only that we were unable to measure it and discern it among the noise (if it exists). Which would mean, that if it exists it’s not too big.
On the other hand, the last 30 year trend is based on better data from several sources and is more probable, it seems to me.
The question is: can the AGW hypothesis stand on this basis alone (30 year trend) without the longer historical data ?
#360, #365, #367:
It looks like my assertion that the temperature trends are normally distributed is controversial. 🙂
I am seriously considering writing a new program that will process temperature records and accumulate variances so that the “error bars” are available. Of course, doing so will require variance estimates for every input. The analysis will be much more difficult without use of the central limit theorem (ie assuming normal error distributions).
So, here’s my reasoning:
I realize that there are biases between instruments, but those are removed by determining the offset between old instruments and new instruments during the period of overlap. Since we are looking at trends (not absolute values), these biases should have little effect.
What am I missing?
#631
Huh? Surely you’re not claiming that no particle can pick up energy from another particle? If that were the case every particle would soon be at exactly the same energy.
#366 reid simpson:
As I read the excerpt you quoted, this new paper finds that the ratio of troposphere to surface trends is about 1.0 (they both warm about the same amount). Apparently climate models predict a ratio of about 1.3. The models are therefore off by about 30% when it comes to the *ratio* of troposphere to surface trends.
The original question from Larry was:
This paper does seem to indicate a problem with the models, but it says nothing about the correlation between satellite and surface measurements.
David… If the particle is more energetic, yes. If not,no. There must be an energy density gradient.
357 says:
Does anyone know why the warming is supposed to be at 8-12 km?
#368 Jacob:
The last 30 years is, to me, the most important for demonstrating AGW. It does not really matter if the world was warmer 1000 years ago or 70 years ago — the question is why is the world warming now? And why so quickly? Other than CO2 (and equivalents), are there other forcings that could cause this?
From my understanding of the science, most of the alternative theories do not stand up to scrutiny.
John V, I think the issue is GW vs AGW. Theory of CO2 (greenhouse) induced arming says that the lower troposphere warming rate should be 1.3x the surface rate. From 1980-2005 the NASA (Hansen) global average surface warming has been 0.42 degrees C near enough, giving a 0.17 degree C/decade. The RSS satellite estimation is 0.18. The UAH estimation is 0.12. So the relation between surface and troposphere is not in agreement with theory in either case. UAH seems to be in better agreement with radiosonde, with all corrections made, than is RSS. If UAH is correct. and if AGW theory is correct, surface warming should be no more than 0.09 degrees C/decade, or 0.22 in the last 25 years (1980-2005). After all corrections you guys are working on are made, this may well prove to be the case, which would add some credibility to AGW but would pretty well eliminate catastrophic AGW projections. Interestingly, such a result of corrections would also bring recent warming quite in line with the estimated long term trend since ca 1700. Hmmm. There is far more evidence to support solar driven warming than to support AGW.
Now I know more than I ever wanted to know about why Steve doesn’t like physics discussions here…
Lubos:
In reference to your comments on my #91 on this thread the WWII & Russian Occupation comment was simply my editorializing and was more to note additional discrepancies in the record that could not be readily accounted for. The Russian Occupation comment assumed that the equipment had disappeared and was predicated on the proclivity of the Soviet occupying forces to take whatever was movable and had any value whatsoever. The 2.7C magnitude of the Praha Ruzyne adjustment struck me as being orders of magnitude greater than anything identified elsewhere – suggesting that there may well be others out there that are not due to any conceivable rounding or missing data correcting algorithm. I anticipate some minor disconnects between the output of the code and the consolidated records. I take your point on the leap year – I was grasping for straws.
Re: #616, 617, 622 et al
What do the IPCC and its cited AGW authorities say the calculated increase in temperatures should be in degrees Centigrade/Celsius for each 100ppm increase of CO2 from 100ppm to 10,000ppm?
If people can identify good expostions of mainstream physics with numbers that can be verified, then I can see some point discussing things. Otherwise am personally uninterested in any discussions that are not based on such a text.
As you know, I’ve been unsuccessful in getting Gavin Schmidt, Gerry North and various posters here to identify a usable exposition that meets my criteria. Maybe interested parties can ask at RC, Tamino and other sites for a reference.
In #358, John V says:
John, those 100 thermometers are not measuring the same thing though – they are in physically different places and measuring physically different values. So you may be confident in your calculation and how accurate the mean temperature is from a purely maths/stats point of view, but in my view such an average does not give you any meaningful handle on climate/weather – taking the simple case of 2 temperatures at different locations, (extreme example follows) does the mean of the temperatures at, say, Hoboken and Dallas provide you with any meaningful information? Without individual station information, what does the trend of this mean tell you? I would have thought the mean of the trends would tell you more, but what do I know? 😉
Beaking news: Farmers almanac predicts 2008 to be hottest year of the last century
article
637 – Steve, If I may, I think what you’re driving at is that there’s settled science, and then there’s IPCC science, and then there’s Hansen science, and then there’s Gore science. The focal point needs to be peeling the IPCC science and the Hansen science from the settled science, and testing the weak spots in the IPCC and Hansen science. The Gore science doesn’t even deserve attention.
There’s no point in attempting to disprove the proven basics of the greenhouse effect that’s been understood for a century, but there is a point in questioning the calculations. Is that about right?
Larry 10:52 AM,
I think this is disputed. A number of people think that heat transfer in the denser segments of the atmosphere take place by convection, conduction, and evaporation/condensation.
I don’t think radiation is effective until the mean free path of a photon is many meters.
#640. There is a plausible physical basis for concluding that increased CO2 will result in higher surface temperatures. That doesn’t tell you whether the effect of doubled CO2 is 0.05 deg C, .5 deg C, 2.5 deg C, 5 deg C or 15 deg C.
That’s why I’m interested in more of an engineering approach to the subsequent calculations.
You can use models in engineering calculations, but engineers spell out the models in great detail in engineering reports.
If there were articles or reports that spelled out the calculations in the detail that an engineering rpeort would have,
then one could assess the calculations. However, no one seems able to produce calculations at this level of detail.
They either cite reports of GCM output where no one really knows the components or ancient science articles that merely outline the physical effect.
Let me tell you what I know about nuclear fusion physics – particles can get bumped up in energy such that the confining field no longer confines.
Fission reactors: neutrons get absorbed and re-emitted by moderators. The re-emission is isotropic in the moderator particle frame of reference. However in the laboratory frame there is a net average direction. In addition if the moderator is thick enough it can act as a very effective reflector due to the isotropic nature of re-emission.
So what is the time constant of the atmosphere? Short compared to a day. At noon radiation peaks. At 3 PM temps peak. That should give a fair picture of the atmospheric time constant.
Trying to figure out if the earth is heating by measuring air temperature is going to be exceedingly difficult and prone to error due to the low signal to noise ratio.
369. What are you missing?
I’m pretty sure that if you look at all the mean temps for a Given
time series or all time series you will will be able to calculate a mean
( its just math) and calculate a varience. And when plotted it will look
Normal.
That is not the issue.
Steve Milesworthy September 11th, 2007 at 10:09 am says:
Steve, that makes no sense. What is back radiation? Net radiation is always from hotter to colder. If hot temperature is constant and the cold temp decreases radiation will increase. If the hot temperature is hotter and the cold temperature is constant radiation will increase. If the hot is hotter and the cold is colder radiation will increase.
It is not plausible to assert that cooling the cold side will increase the temperature of the hot side.
However, this may have something to do with “back” that I do not understand.
Hypothesis, from what I understand.
Mark
I say we go for the Guiness Book of Records on thread length.
For all who argue that the temperature can’t rise with altitude, ‘splain this:
Gunnar September 11th, 2007 at 11:32 am,
Let me add to your point.
Radiation absorbed by the atmosphere does not contribute much to global warming because the time constant of the atmosphere is short.
It is only insofar as the radiation and atmospheric temperatures warm the oceans and the earth that they contribute to warming due to the longer time constants of the earth and the ocean. Almost all the climatic effect will be felt in about 2 time constants. Even in that case, if the dominant time constant of the dense matter is short (say 5 years as has been shown in some papers) then whatever the inputs were up to 1997 have almost totally been felt.
Actually it is worse than that due to seasonal variation which will cause energy to accumulate more slowly. It will also cause the average temperature to reflect the changed energy more quickly.
Posit a hot summer. Most of the extra energy will be given up in winter. Even if the winter is average. Even if it is above average. There can’t be much storage from year to year with large yearly cyclic variations.
Be nice to put some numbers to this.
642 NAILS IT exactly.
To be sure there are paths of skepticism that can question whether
C02 causes warming.
However, if one accepts the premise of the warm and cozy C02 comforter, then
the “sensitivity” question is raise.
How much increase in C for a doubling of C02.
Actually its more complex… Is the sensitivity linear or not
100ppm to 200 ppm? Increase in C? 2.5C
1000ppm to 2000ppm. Increase in C? 2.5C
10000ppm to 20000ppm??
Since the AGW crowd suggests some kind of control system ( Limit C02 save the world)
We probably want to understand climate sensitivity in its full complexity before
we impose arbitary C02 limiters.
Larry September 11th, 2007 at 6:54 pm,
Not hard to explain.
Ever hear of the solar wind? It is not very dense. It can heat atmosphere that is not dense. In the even less dense area radiation is predominant. So cooling predominates. In the denser regions it does not contain enough energy to do direct heating.
Do the models take into account solar wind and its variation? Probably not. The models are too coarse for that.
I think 648 pretty much “nails it exactly.” It’s all about heat storage vs losses. You store a little extra heat in the daytime with OCO, then lose it all before sunrise. But there is still probably a little warming, on the average (max-min)/2. All dogs in this fight probably have a little truth.
Simon, but according to the [t-word] experts here, if the temperature rises with altitude, heat can’t escape the earth. We’ll eventually burn up.
dammit, I mean (max + min)/2.
648
Temperature rises in the upper stratosphere because oxygen and ozone absorb short wavelength UV. However, better than 90% of the atmosphere is below the upper stratosphere. It’s in the lowest part of the atmosphere, the troposphere with pressure greater than ~200 mbar, where temperature normally decreases with altitude. You can still get local temperature inversions where the temperature increases with altitude, especially on a clear night when the surface cools faster than the air above it or in the LA basin. This is basic Physical Meteorology. I’d link to a good resource on the net, but I’ve done that several times before with no apparent result so I won’t bother again.
Should have been 647
654, Sorry, but there is some context that goes back 100 comments or so. Gunnar was arguing that a negative lapse rate violates the second law. The point of that was to show how silly that is.
But, DeWitt, how does CO2 affect that? And is that temperature in the upper stratosphere greater than the surface temperature? Greater than 10 km? (just asking).
DeWitt Payne,
The surface would be warmed up by a warmer atmosphere at night. However, in the inversion scenario, as night advances the surface temperature decreases until the first sunbeams hit upon it. Its a signal that the Earth loses more heat at night?
Jae,
It’s not OCO, but OHO, so in liquid phase as in gaseous phase. I repeat, at his current concentration, OCO has an absorptivity of 0.00092. There is faulty science in ciphers given by some sources.
Sorry, it must say “…I repeat, at its current concentration…”
OHO???
FWIW, my firefox is dying at this thread depth. Sorry guys, I can’t argue [t-word] anymore.
Larry, Oops! HOH… Hah!
John V This should be in unthreaded.
The theory is that as CO2 concentrations increase, the altitude where CO2 absorption desaturates increases. It is only when the CO2 band desaturates that radiative emission is higher than absorption and there is a net loss to space of radiation. However, there are many holes to this theory and none of the sites that I have been able to find or papers read, clearly explains the mechanism. There is an alternate theory propounded at realclimate related to pressure broadening of the CO2 absorption lines due to increased partial pressure. However, I looked up the relevant quantum mechanical equations related to this and found that pressure broadening is proportional to the entire atmosphere, not just the partial pressure of CO2. Also, the pressure broadening is dependent upon temperature to the square root power, therefore making it a feedback not a forcing mechanism.
Another thing that I have been playing around with and will probably do a Mathematica workbook on, is that the way that pressure broadening actually works is to shift a fraction of the CO2 molecules into a higher (or lower) energy state, dependent upon the mean time between collisions in the atmosphere (thus the dependence upon total atmospheric pressure). What this does is to shift the emission spectra up and down in wavelength, but only by a very small fraction of a wavenumber, thus putting the shifted emission lines between the primary emission lines. Theoretically, this should decrease temperature, not increase it because you have shifted the emission lines away from the absorption wavenumber, thus opening a window for emission all the way out of the atmosphere.
All of this is very deterministic and calcuable but I have yet to see any papers that actually calculate this in detail. The explanation on realclimate is a joke. All of the equations are readily obtainable from any textbook on the Quantum theory of light. The math is pretty gnarly but QM is soo darned interesting.
Can one of you Engineers help me out here?
I was just reading the latest post over at World Climate Report, “Increasing Variability in a Warmer World?” Normally they keep the tech-talk to minimum, but this one had a few eye-glazers: “Probability density function” and “variance and the kurtosis of the distribution changes”
Eh? Especially, what’s the difference between “probability density” and plain old probability? Wiki wasn’t much help.
Anyone?
Re: PaddikJ #659:
A probability density function (pdf) describes the probability distribution of a continuous random variable. With a continuous random variable X, the probability P(X = a) = 0 for any given a. The pdf f for X instead allows you to compute P(a
Re: PaddikJ #659:
A probability density function (pdf) describes the probability distribution of
a continuous random variable. With a continuous random variable X, the
probability P(X = a) = 0 for any given a. The pdf f for X instead allows you
to compute P(a <= X <= b) by integrating f(x) between a and b.
Variance is the square of the standard deviation of a random variable (variance is a more “natural” value, but s.d. is often more useful because it has the
same units as the random variable).
Kurtosis is a measure of how “pointy” the distribution is (a flattish
distribution is said to be “platykurtic” while a narrow distribution is said to
be “leptokurtic” — chasing down where these names come from is left as an
exercise for the student :-).
I’ll throw in another one free: skewness says which side, if any, of the
distribution has the longer “tail”.
These things are all related in the following way:
Variance(X) = E[(X – \mu)^2]
Skewness(X) = E[(X – \mu)^3]
Kurtosis(X) = E[(X – \mu)^4]
In technical language, they are the second, third, and fourth moments about the
mean.
Given a probability density function, f(x), then the probability that X lies between two arbitrary points a and b along the x-axis is P(a
Paddick #659
Additionally, one of the most common probability density functions is
the Gaussian distribution, or Normal distribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
Oops, first portion was the same as what Ralph said.
Kurtosis is not actually the 4th central moment, though the first three cumulants are equal to their respective moments.
kurt(x) = E{x^4} – 3(E{x^2})^2
for zero mean x. In contrast, the 4th central moment collapses to E{x^4} for zero mean data.
Kurtosis is an interesting measure because zero-mean Gaussian distributions have kurt(x) = 0. There are a whole lot of things you can do with this fact.
Mark
#659 paddick
wikipedia can be turgid I found this easier to follow
http://people.hofstra.edu/Stefan_Waner/cprob/cprob2.html
The wiki on kurtosis is very lacking.
Mark
>> Does anyone know why the warming is supposed to be at 8-12 km?
Because that’s where the effective C02 is. C02 in the troposphere is dominated by water, so it’s ineffective. The C02 at 8-12 km retain heat for a short while, slowing heat transfer at night.
>> For all who argue that the temperature cant rise with altitude, splain this:
1) that’s the thermosphere during the day. At night, the temp of the thermosphere collapses. 2) that’s a text book picture of the stratosphere, reality is different
>> if the temperature rises with altitude, heat cant escape the earth. Well eventually burn up.
The text book picture is for illustration purposes only. The reality can be seen in the figure “Observed lapse rate and the tropopause”:
http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjps/1400/atmos_struct.html
Note that the high temperature of the Stratopause is only at -40, at the most! Also note that air moves between the tropics and polar regions. Also note that thunderstorms extend into the lower stratosphere, transferring large amounts of energy (2 – 3600 x 10^13 Joules per TS). There are about 2000 thunderstorms happening in any given moment. This is yet another example why the static, 1st law challenged approach of averaging inputs with a fictitious radiative balance is incorrect.
>> Gunnar was arguing that a negative lapse rate violates the second law.
Why do you twist my words? I never said “a negative lapse rate violates the 2nd law”. I said that the 2nd law holds. I think I’ve demonstrated that with 1) the thermosphere temperature completely collapsing at night and 2) the stratopause not being as hot as you thought, and 3) thunderstorms transfering energy, there is no problem with earth releasing energy into the upper atmosphere, especially at night.
#667 M Simon
The sun warms the surface of the earth. The earth radiates and warms the CO2 which in turn warms the atmosphere. The warm atmosphere radiates some of its energy back down to earth – this latter is sometimes termed “back radiation”.
Without the GHGs the radiation from the surface of the earth all goes straight to space and the earth would rapidly cool at night. With the GHGs, the surface still cools, but the back radiation slows down the cooling rate (it doesn’t “warm” the surface).
#624 Gunnar:
I do not think that Gunnar is right in stating that temperatures reach equilibrium during the night. If the weather stays constant, a place cools all night, and the coolest temperatures are reached just after sunrise. Having camped in deserts and at high altitude I have suffered this!
I suppose temperature would stabilise if the cooling air saturates, but only due to latent heat of condensation.
I had a bout of kurtosis once. Calling it four moments doesn’t do it justice. But it was mean.
Re#698:
The sun warms the surface of the earth. The earth radiates and warms the CO2 which in turn warms the atmosphere. The warm atmosphere radiates some of its energy back down to earth – this latter is sometimes termed back radiation.
Yep. Exactly this commonly accepted vulgarization violates the second law.
Much more complicated real-word sun-surface-atmosphere interaction with vertical and horizontal convective and moisture energy transfer, direct heating of atmosphere by UV and IR, and differences between night and day energy vectors is not properly modeled and described anywhere.
Ba dump bump! 😉
Mark
>> If the weather stays constant, a place cools all night, and the coolest temperatures are reached just after sunrise.
To some extent, you are right. However, looking at accuweather many times, I see stabilization or near stabilization. As you must know, temperature changes are determined by heat flow, which is proportional to the delta T between two objects. As the difference gets smaller, the heat flow is smaller, and the temperature approaches steady state. The simplistic radiative balance ignores this reality. Many people forget that the earth is a heat source. The heat flow from the earth is based only the delta T between the earth and the atmosphere.
>> Having camped in deserts and at high altitude I have suffered this!
Yes, that makes sense, since you are removing yourself from the two factors that stabilize temperature: water and earth heat. In the Grand Canyon, in the middle of winter, it is still warm and summer-like. And all skiers know that valleys are warm.
>> I suppose temperature would stabilise if the cooling air saturates, but only due to latent heat of condensation.
But that’s exactly the point. At night, water vapor condenses, releasing a huge amount of heat. The air temperature at the surface will stabilize when the the land, heated from below and the air heated from condensing water, reach equilibrium. It doesn’t always happen of course, but I think the convential answer to the question “why is the moons average temperature below that of earth”, which is “natural GH effect” is wrong. The real answer is Earth’s core is molten, and the atmosphere has water. So it’s not the fact that water is a GHG that’s crucial (don’t get me wrong, it is important), it’s the fact that water is evaporating in the day and condensing at night.
Steve Milesworthy September 12th, 2007 at 8:47 am,
Yes. I agree. You see the same thing in nuke reactors where the moderator is an isotropic emitter of absorbed neutrons. It becomes a reflector.
Also agree that with the atmospheric time constant so short re: radiation the biggest change will be in the slope of the temp decline during the night.
I think this “back radiation” business is where some people get afoul of a certain second law. There simply cannot be a net flow of heat (radiation) from a colder area to a hotter one; the flow goes the other way, always. The air does not heat the earth, except possibly at very high latitudes. THe Sun heats the earth and the air; and the earth also heats the air (Solar insolation is more than 50% IR, contrary to what many people seem to believe). The GHGs store some of that heat for a short time. CO2 is a GHG and it can add a little to that stored heat. I think that’s all there is to it, really. I think the primary question is just how much of this heat is stored by CO2 and how does this affect temperature. I’m having trouble just accepting a MODTRAN type calculation for this, but maybe it is appropriate ??
700, Andrey: Right on! I didn’t see your post before posting myself.
Let’s see if we can pick up this conversation here in Unthreaded…
#666 steven mosher:
Ok, we agree that is not the issue. I want to figure out where we disagree, so I will try to explain my position in detail.
I am proposing that the readings from each individual instrument are normally distributed around the real temperature plus a bias. If T is the actual temperature, t1 is the indicated temperature, b1 is the instrument bias, and r1 is a random number with a normal distribution with variance v1, then:
t1 = T + b1 + r1
I am *not* saying that the bias in a sample of instruments has a normal distribution. The bias is likely skewed by the instrument technology of the period.
Over any given year, you get 365 values for t1. You can average those to get the average temperature:
t1.avg = T.avg + b1 + r1.avg,
where r1.avg has variance v1.avg = v1 / sqrt(365)
That’s pretty precise but still not very accurate because of b1. However, we are only interested in the trend of T1, so the bias becomes unimportant (assuming the bias is constant over time).
When a new instrument is included at the same location, it has readings:
t2 = T + b2 + r2
To combine the readings at t1 and t2 into a single record, we look at the average difference between them:
t2 – t1 = (T + b1 + r1) – (T + b2 + r2) = (b1 – b2) + r12,
where r12 is a normal distribution with variance v12 = v1 + v2.
Is there anything above that we disagree on? If not, where do we disagree?
#660 Neil Fisher:
Neil, if your goal is to calculate the temperature trend in the lower-48, then having measurements from Dallas and Hoboken is definitely better than just Dallas. It’s not nearly enough measurements, but every measurement helps.
With thermometers every couple of hundred miles, the average temperature at any instant may have a large uncertainty due to weather systems moving across the thermometers. But over a large time period the random weather influence will average out. A temperature trend over a period of days or weeks would be impossible to measure because of noise in the signal from weather. Over a period of years however, the temperature trend can become very clear.
Absorptivity and emissivity of any substance depends on its partial pressure. We cannot detach the concentration, the density, the partial pressure and the specific heat from the other thermal properties of OCO. Indeed thats the flag that the IPCC waves, but waves it twisted. The partial pressure of any atmospheric gas depends on its proportion in the mix of air. The current density of the atmospheric OCO is 0.00071 Kg/m^3, thus its partial pressure is 0.00034 atm*m, and the absorptivity-emissivity of the OCO at that partial pressure is ridiculously low. One cannot take the total pressure of the air to make the calculi for one of its components alone. One must to consider the properties of that component separately from the whole. The characteristics of HOH are not transmissible to OCO, although the presence of other components can have an influence over other components.
#700 Andrey
No it doesn’t. Though I would point out that the “vulgarised” version is often used as a basis for disproving the effect. Eg. along the lines of “the Greenhouse effect doesn’t work like a real greenhouse, therefore it must be wrong” argument. I’d give you a citation of such an argument but I’d be snipped.
#702 Gunnar
The heat flow is from the earth’s surface, through the atmosphere and into space. Space is 3 degrees Kelvin, the earth’s surface is about 290K and the atmosphere between about 290K and 220K give or take. If the sun were to disappear, the heat flow from the earth’s surface to space (impeded by the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases) will continue till the earth’s surface reaches about 3K (it will take a relatively longer time to cool through the earth’s crust – but that’s a mere detail).
Latent heat released from condensation and freezing of moisture (and other gases once it gets really cold) will act as temporary buffers to this cooling. I guess that is what you are seeing in Accuweather (and if you camp in a moist valley, as I was last week – waking each morning to a wet tent and a heavy dew). You can’t argue that this plateauing of temperature is a limiting point of the greenhouse effect. Without CO2, the plateau would be reached quicker, the moisture would condense and freeze quicker and then the cooling would then continue.
#704 Jae
If you read my original post #609, I said the net flow of energy is always from the surface to the cooler atmosphere. If the atmosphere is warmer due to more absorption by GHG’s then the net flow may be less, but it is still upwards.
I will go further and say that (in an ideal solar systen) if the earth disappeared, the sun would ever so slightly cool for a bit because some of the earth’s (tiny amount of) IR radiation that was impinging on the sun will no longer do so. OK it will be a difference of 10 to the minus a large number of degrees C, but no laws violated (assuming God is not upset by such destructive thought experiments).
Search for “solar spectrum” in Google images if you think the solar spectrum is 50% IR. This one shows how much of the solar spectrum is absorbed by the atmosphere:
From where we got the density of atmospheric OCO?
Density mg/m^3= ppmv (12.187) (MW 44.01) / (T standard + 273.15)
Density = 381 ppmv (12.187) (44.01) / 288.15 K = 709 mg/m^3, or 0.00071 Kg/m^3
The equivalence of its partial pressure in Kilopascals is: 0.00034 atm*m = 0.0344505 kPa.
Steve Milesworthy,
Ive also camped in the open at the desert, but with thermometers and hygrometers at hand. Our bodies felt the coldness immediately after the sunset, but when water vapor condensates as night advances and the heat from the atmosphere is released to the outer space, the atmospheric temperature remains almost constant; however, the dew point increases as night advances, making the relative humidity increases until the sunbeams hit again the surface at the morning. I would like to show you our measurements, but I lost my binnacles from 1982 because they were stolen from my home.
710: Yes, integrate the IR and you will see that it is more than 50%. I agree with your other points.
I remember that at 4:00 AM, the lowest recorded temperature was -0.5 °C, and increased slowly by the next hour, falling sharply until the moment when the Sun rays yawed above the dune shoulders.
#712 Jae
Sorry, should have been clearer. The important proportion is the radiation absorbed by the atmosphere as compared with the TSI, which is much less than 50%.
John V. September 12th, 2007 at 9:53 am,
The difficulty is that the variance increases with the ‘delta T’ from the calibration temp. because of gain errors. Or differences between the thermistor equation and the actual thermistor constants including calculation errors.
The truth is we know nothing about the measurement abilities of the current instruments. With all the noise in the data it is going to be very difficult to determine what the variance of your instrument is.
In order to get less than .1 deg C Calculation error in an aircraft temp. meas. ckt. with a thermistor I had to resort to 32 bit arithmetic. The specs were not that tight that I might not have gotten away with 16 bit arithmetic. However, I hate unnecessary errors.
Oh yeah. Of course the error will depend where you are in the span.
So how many bits do our temp boxes use? A/D and calculations.
# 714
Jae, Steve milesworthy,
14% from SIR is absorbed by the air, specifically by the water vapor and dew. Carbon Dioxide is almost transparent to the short wave infrared radiation incoming from the Sun.
Water deposits, water vapor and dew absorb SIR mostly by resonance.
Steve M, I generally agree with some of what you say in #709 and #710, with these points:
>> Space is 3 degrees Kelvin
Space has no temperature, since there is no mass. The 2.7 K thing is an effective temperature, not a real temperature. Big difference. Thermodynamics doesn’t react to effective temperatures. It’s an incorrect use of Plancks equation, which models the radiation caused by atomic movements. This is just one type of radiation. You can’t take a different type of radiation, ie from a different source, like solar, radio tower, cosmic, and plug that into Planck equation and get a temperature. The most you can say is that this radiation is equivalent to what you would get if there was a mass there with a real temperature equal to the “effective” temperature.
>> till the earths surface reaches about 3K
Hmmm, I think it will always be heated from below. I don’t think the core temperature will ever go that low, since I think the phase diagram of iron says that at the high pressure in the core, the temperature cannot be below a certain value. I think this exposes the problem with this radiative balance blind spot that many people have. For example, Jupiter receives only 3.7% of earth’s solar radiation, Saturn 1.1%, Uranus .27% and Neptune .11%. Despite this, Saturn’s core temperature is 12,000 degrees C. Saturn gives off more heat than it absorbs from the Sun, again falsifying the radiative balance idea.
>> You cant argue that this plateauing of temperature is a limiting point of the greenhouse effect. Without CO2, the plateau would be reached quicker, the moisture would condense and freeze quicker and then the cooling would then continue.
If it’s a plateau, ie it reaches equilibrium, then the cooling would not continue. Don’t mix up the hypothetical case of the earth suddenly finding itself sunless with the real case. There is a plateau, because the water vapor condenses and releases a large amount of heat into the atmosphere. In this real case, the only effect of OCO is to reach the plateau slower, not change the value of the plateau.
>> assuming God is not upset by such destructive thought experiments
God wants us to know the truth. If a thought experiment helps that effort, it’s gooood. 🙂
>> integrate the IR and you will see that it is more than 50%
And Jae, does that curve reflect the fact that the higher the frequency, the more energy? This would make the higher frequency radiation more important. I guess I’m wondering how they measure radiation, in what raw units?
>> important proportion is the radiation absorbed by the atmosphere as compared with the TSI, which is much less than 50%.
Yes, but what is not absorbed by the atmosphere, hits the land and sea.
The IR resonance of water is affected by pH.
# 718
Gunnar wrote: Yes, but what is not absorbed by the atmosphere, hits the land and sea.
Of course, youre pretty right, and land and sea absorb 50.01% of the total IR incoming from the Sun.
Gunnar says:
That is complete crap. Space does, indeed, have a background radiation temperature, and the universe has an entropy, and so do black holes. Go to Luboŝ’s blog, and learn a few things about physics: http://motls.blogspot.com/
Gunnar, I’ve erased your post. If you wish I could erase the other one. I’ve to tell you that I agree with what you wrote on your first post.
RE 706.
Well Your approach is basically the Jones approach. ( his paper is on hadobs somewhere)
I have a bunch of issues with it. Let me collect my thoughts and then write something up
properly.
But lets look at it this way.
Suppose you wife was 100lbs when you married her.
And every day since she has been on a yo yo diet. take 5lbs off put 8 on, take 3 off put 10 on
And every day she weighs herself once day, so 365 measurements per year. and every year she
gains ( on a net basis ) 2 lbs or so. so after 40 years of married and nearly 1500 measurements
she steps on the scale and the scale reads 179 lbs.
1. How accurate is the 179lb reading?
2. How accurate is your trend estimate?
3. How accurate was the 140lb reading 20 years ago?
4. How accurate was the trend estimate 20 years ago.
It’s offical now. The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today website recognizes that the Antarctic sea ice area (not to be confused with NSIDC calculations of sea ice extent) has reached a maximum ever recorded value of 16.26 million km^2.
>> That is complete crap. Space does, indeed, have a background radiation temperature
There is a background radiation coming through space. But plugging this radiation into Plancks equation only yields an “effective” temperature, since the source of this radiation is not atomic movement. Never said anything about entropy or black holes, so I guess your just ranting. Temperature is an attribute of mass, and space by definition is massless.
>> Gunnar, Ive erased your post. If you wish I could erase the other one. Ive to tell you that I agree with what you wrote on your first post.
Nasif, I’m confused. What do you mean “erased”? Do you have that power on this blog? If so, why did you erase it?
Larry,
The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) depends on the photons density, which is 400 cm^-3 at this moment in space-time. This density is larger than the cosmic mean density of photons emitted by the stars. Thus the temperature of the universe is the same at any observed point. The dipoles observed in the cosmic temperature are due to the Doppler Effect caused by the movements of our galaxy. As the universe expands, the density of photons decreases because the conservation of the number of photons. I know Dr. Manuel will not agree with me on this issue. However, we have not other plain and valid explanation for the multiple polarities in the CMB.
Gunnar,
No, Ive not the potential to erase posts from a site that isnt mine. Im sorry for being so cryptic. I referred to your posts at my page on annual energy budget.
#723 steven mosher:
Are you kidding?
What the heck — I’ll play along:
1. The accuracy of the 179lb is equal to the scale’s accuracy today
2. The trend estimate has a variance that depends on the scale’s variance and depends on the time scale. If the trend is from day 0 to day 14600 (40 years in days), then the variance in the average trend is:
v.trend = (v.day0 + v.day14600) / sqrt(14600),
where v.day0 is the variance 40 years ago and v.day14600 is the variance today.
If the trend is based on yearly averages, then
v.trend ~ [(v.day0 + v.day14600) / sqrt(365)] / sqrt(40),
where v.day0 / 365 approximates the variance for a yearly average
which is the same as the daily trend variance.
3. The accuracy of the 140lb is equal to the scale’s accuracy 20 years ago
4. See #2
—–
Now it’s your turn. Many posts ago you said:
Let’s leave our poor wives alone and get back to that… 🙂
re 729..
Well I suppose we need to get down to specifics. How do you a think Mean temperature is
recorded for a Day?
I’ve tried avoiding getting back into this thread, but really it’s absurd. How can there be so many people who don’t understand the second law of T and think that the atmosphere can’t send IR toward the surface just because it’s warmer than the atmosphere? I sure wish Steve McIntyre would allow a thread to work through this. He could always put a disclaimer, “Hope abandon, all ye who enter here” or something. It’s not like this IR from the atmosphere can’t be measured or something.
On another subject, the cosmic background radiation is indeed from atomic (or better sub-atomic)movement; it’s just that it happened 15-20 billion years ago and is now red shifted to about 3 K. You folks can quibble about whether it’s “space” which has the temperature, but when you can’t identify where particular photons came from, it makes sense to call it “space”. To be more precise, the photons call the cosmic background radiation are those which escaped being recycled in the original ball of fire of the big bang. Once the subatomic particles condensed into atoms, they were transparent to most radiation and it just continued moving through space up to the present day. Occasional photons will collide with condensed matter (like the earth) and be absorbed. More photons of the same energy level will be emitted, but the vast majority simply continue.
Of course, I’m oversimplifying as I’m implying that individual, localized photons exist when it’s actually a field which is present.
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