Hans Erren observes: one other serious complication exists in the real world which we shouldn’t overlook. There are two stable tropopause heights observed in the atmosphere: Tropical tropopause Arctic tropopause At their boundaries (mid lattitude) the most intersting weather occurs, where most people live and where climate change affects the most people. What will happen […]
John A has briefly come out of retirement and set up a CA bulletin board, see here for prototype – which I’m hoping will resolve some blog operating issues. The Bulletin Board presently has 4 main forums and provides for threads within a forum like other boards. I can see a couple of advantages to […]
The IPCC defines radiative forcing at the tropopause. However, nowhere do they provide a diagram showing energy balances above the tropopause and below the tropopause – something that seems like one of the first things to do. Instead, they show the Kiehl and Trenberth cartoon which treats the atmosphere as a whole without distinguishing balances […]
Readers have written in to say that it was not the job of the IPCC to provide a self-contained exposition of the scientific issues pertaining to increased CO2. I’ve looked at a couple of statements of the role of the IPCC and there’s certainly nothing that prohibits them from providing a coherent explanation. IPCC’s website […]
Judith Curry writes: I’ve posted the chapter on Thermodynamic Feedbacks in the Climate System from my text “Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans” on my website, the links can be found at Text: http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/pdf/Ch13_GalleyC.pdf Figs: http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/pdf/chapter13_figs.pdf For my more recent thoughts on the subject of climate feedbacks, I refer you to my previous post on the […]
A logarithmic relationship between CO2, radiative forcing and direct impact is reported by IPCC and widely relied on. While this may well be a plausible relationship (Lubo, for one, endorses it), it is not easy finding a proof of the relationship. In a recent post, I noted this in connection with IPCC AR1 (1990), where […]
Here is an account of an intriguing review carried out by NASA in response to a civilian Request for Review. NASA’s webpage on the Data Quality Act states: In accordance with the President’s Management Council, NASA implements the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) following requirements for quality of information. Section 515, “OMB Guidelines for […]
This topic has spilled into Unthreaded. The one comment that I would be inclined to make on this is that, if people are depending on water from glacier retreat in tropical and temperate settings, then it seems to me that their water supply would be equally diminished by glacier stabilization or advance, not just by […]
Reader Michael Smith asked about the provenance of Figure 1.1 in the SPM for the AR4 Synthesis Report. While we’ve had some discussions of WG1, we’ve not discussed the Synthesis Report before. While following up the references for this Figure, I encountered the WG1 FAQ – a document which I had previously not noticed. The […]
Pierrehumbert recently made the following statement about the truncation of data: Whatever the source of the purported … data, there is no legitimate reason in a paper published in 2007 for truncating the … record … as they did. There is, however, a very good illegitimate reason, in that truncating the curve in this way […]
Climate Audit 