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muoncounter at 06:54 AM on 23 January 2011The Climate Show #5: Green roofs and Brisbane floods
#8: "Note the last sentence of the abstract." The Huntington paper, with its "should not be taken as evidence that further warming will not lead to such changes in the future" was accepted for publication in July 2005. Ironic that a mere 6 weeks later, Katrina arrived and the remainder of the 2005 Atlantic tropical storm season was one of the worst ever. Pretty good prediction of the future after all. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:54 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
Camburn @ 8... But that phase is well understood in terms of obliquity. The north pole was pointing more directly at the sun some 6-8000 years ago. On the other hand we are currently looking at ice free summers in the arctic in the coming decade or two, something we have NOT seen on this planet for a much longer period of time. -
Tom Loeber at 06:46 AM on 23 January 2011It's freaking cold!
Yooper, I totally agree with everything you state there and I too am a believer that we have AGW. I guess though staying open with questions as to the possibility of AGW leading to AGC is so much of a no-no that straw-men arguments are seen as worth while. Ah, thank you Riccardo. i see you maybe don't like analogies nor observing the data but would rather there be some kind of grand over-all reaching theory presented as knowledge? You know that guy? Care to elaborate? I tend to like that he seems to not hold certainty but is only looking at confirmable data and what we know from the past to conjecture about the future. The fact that he suggests great alarm at being proved wrong should show that he is not suggesting he knows what the grand scheme is. I wonder as to your wherewithal if the major criticism you have to offer is that he doesn't offer or adhere to any grand theory. -
Camburn at 06:35 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
The ice declined a lot during the early Holocene as well. http://gizmo.geotop.uqam.ca/rochonA/Fisher_et_al_Eos_2006.pdf -
Daniel Bailey at 06:30 AM on 23 January 2011It's freaking cold!
Re: Tom Loeber (78) The Big Picture you are missing is that the part of the atmosphere where humans happen to live is the part warming the most. And that the cooling of the stratosphere and mesosphere is an integral part of that warming signal so characteristic of rising levels of CO2. Recent events, both in terms of temperature and precipitation, are being shown to have a causal relationship consistent with AGW. To say that we cannot have a level of understanding deeper than that you've demonstrated is simply incoherent. The Yooper -
Riccardo at 06:26 AM on 23 January 2011It's freaking cold!
Tom Loeber "He appears to be relatively free thinking" a little too free, in my opinion; free from the influences of the physics of climate, in first place. He goes on and on with analogies and eye-balling correlations while I was waiting for some insight on the mechanisms leading to his predictions. I wasted my time. Not a surprise, though, I know this guy. "Maybe though we are missing the big picture if we only consider surface temperatures and averages." I agree that if one considers only surface temperatures and averages is missing the big picture. I wonder who's doing this. This post was written exactly to counter such kind of over-simplifications. I think we may agree on the simple fact that the globally average surface temperature is the end result of much more complex processes which determines it. No surprise that it took 1000 pages and a lot of scientists time to just summarize in the IPCC AR4 the most recent science. But this end result is what has a direct impact on our lives, so I'll keep watching the surface temperature trend. -
michael sweet at 06:06 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
Eric, I have not seen data with error bars on them. Even if the error bars are large, it still indicates a substantial decrease in the ice area before 1980. The scientists at the NSIDC would know what the error is. The flatness, especially in the Antarctic, is certainly due to lack of accurate data. On the other hand, that does not mean that there is no data. You have to work with what data you have. And the data after about 1940 is more detailed. Your ice edge data is consistent with the Arctic data from Cryosphere Today. The ice declined a lot from 1900 to 1980. That needs to be kept in mind when we look at the ice situation today. -
Tom Loeber at 05:47 AM on 23 January 2011It's freaking cold!
Gee, I've gone through the past couple months of these videos by the meteorologist Joe Bastardi of Accuweather.com . This latest one is alarming. I know some folks find anything that is alarming should be met with much skepticism. Bastardi seems to base his understanding only on quite substantially verified evidence. I learned he doesn't appear to totally discount the idea that our influences on the planet might somehow be involved. In one of the other recent video blogs he states the need to go green or carbon neutral is more necessary to avoid greater destruction by cooling than by warming. He appears to be relatively free thinking, coming off the top of his head and valuing honesty and openness as well as have an understanding of basic logic and sound theorizing. Boy, that hit piece on noctilucents that only used 36% of their spread in time to discount their influence appears to have done the trick to keep the alarm of their appearance and increase apparently in step with the increase of carbon dioxide on the planet from consideration. That seems to hold greater impact on the climate, basically via Earth's albedo, than sunspots. As far as I can tell, the sun is still only within one tenth of a percent of its observed output. To have first surface mirrors coat the planet in the mesosphere reflecting perhaps as much as one percent of the incoming sunlight back into space, growing in frequency and duration, that seems to fit in with Bastardi's observations and predictions, on-going global cooling for the foreseeable future. There is a recent finding that the mesosphere within the last couple of months was measured as having reached the lowest temperature ever recorded. Please. Yes there has been record heat. Maybe though we are missing the big picture if we only consider surface temperatures and averages. It is the idea that we are experiencing unpredicted anomalies in the weather AND climate that suggests interpretation of global warming as only increasing and proceeding linearly as quite non-causal. Meteorologist Joe Bastardi discusses satellite evidence of a cooling atmosphere. I don't know, really. I do think that any one who pretends to know is misleading themselves as well as others. -
Camburn at 05:20 AM on 23 January 2011The Climate Show #5: Green roofs and Brisbane floods
Albatros@11: Personally, I am not comfortable with satillite data indicating rain, or its intensity. As a farmer, I watch the satillite/radar data with great interest. South America does not have a very good radar system, so one has to rely on satillites for hints of their precip pattern. Cloud temp etc will indicate that rain should be falling, and a lot of times it isn't. The satillite maps are useful in that one can see what should be happening, then find the local meteorlogical office for that potential event to see what emperical evidence of rain etc is there. -
Albatross at 04:12 AM on 23 January 2011The Climate Show #5: Green roofs and Brisbane floods
Camburn, Thanks for the link. Huntington (2006, J. Hydrol.). From his conclusions: "Consistency in response among multiple variables lends observational support for theoretical arguments and GCM predictions that warming will likely result in further increases in evaporation and precipitation.The theoretical hydrologic response to a warming-induced intensification as manifested in an increasing frequency and intensity of tropical storms and floods (Knutson and Tuleya, 1999; Tuleya and Knutson, 2002; Karl and Trenberth, 2003) is not supported by the preponderance of evidence to date. Because of the long-term return intervals and stochastic nature of the occurrence of extreme events, however, it may require substantially more time before a change in frequency can be detected (Free et al., 2004). The lack of detectable trends in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms during the 20th century should not be taken as evidence that further warming will not lead to such changes in the future, particularly as the rate of warming in the 21st century is expected to be several times greater than in the 20th century (Cubasch and Meehl, 2001)." The Huntington paper is actually in closer agreement with the findings papers I cited than his abstract suggests. The paper cited referring to tropical storms and floods are quite old, from 1999-2003. The Allan et al. (2010) paper uses satellite data (which provides continuous spatial and temporal coverage) and reveals a different picture regarding tropical storms: "The SSM/I data indicate an increased frequency of the heaviest events with warming, several times larger than the expected Clausius–Clapeyron scaling and at the upper limit of the substantial range in responses in the model simulations." -
Ron Crouch at 03:38 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
Don't forget the albedo. Flanner et al 2011 "We estimate mean Northern Hemisphere forcing at −4.6 to −2.2 W m−2, with a peak in May of −9.0±2.7 W m−2. We find that cyrospheric cooling declined by 0.45 W m−2 from 1979 to 2008, with nearly equal contributions from changes in land snow cover and sea ice. On the basis of these observations, we conclude that the albedo feedback from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere falls between 0.3 and 1.1 W m−2 K−1, substantially larger than comparable estimates obtained from 18 climate models." -
Trueofvoice at 03:22 AM on 23 January 2011We're heading into an ice age
LandyJim, "Dominance" isn't a relevant term in regards to Milankovitch Cycles. MC's are forcings, meaning they initiate a change. CO2 and other greenhouse gases begin to accumulate in the atmosphere in response, which is why we call them feedbacks. Once those gases reach a certain concentration, they exert a greater influence on climate than the relatively small change initiated by the change in Earth's tilt toward the sun. Let me say this again: Milankovitch Cycles do not "dominate", they initiate. -
Tom Curtis at 03:15 AM on 23 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
fydijkstra @36, your objection shows a misunderstanding of the effect of thermal lag on green house warming. When the level of greenhouse gasses increase, that creates an imbalance betweeen incoming and outgoing energy at the top of the atmosphere. The balance is restored primarilly by the surface of the Earth, including the surface of the ocean, warming until the increased IR radiation from that surface compensates for the imbalance. Now suppose the ocean warms to that temperature, but then some of the heat flows to the deep ocean, cooling the surface. Well, then the surface of the ocean will no longer be warm enough to compensate for the imbalance anymore. Consequenlty the surface of the ocean will warm some more. Until the temperature required to restore the imbalance is reached, and heat transfers in the ocean are in quasi-equilibrium so that the surface does not cool again, it will keep on warming. You are wrong, by the way, about both Mann and Santer. Mann did not do anything untoward in his first papers on temperature reconstruction. He did not do it perfectly, but that was because he was the first to do it, and nobody knew what was the best technique. It was only after a few attempts were made that it became clear which were the best techniques, and what pitfalls to avoid. McKittrick has tried to take some minor and inconsequential flaws and try and blow it up into a case for fraud, and and indictment of everything that has followed in the field regardless of how disimilar the techniques used. He is a con artist who is trying to keep you preoccupied with his flashing hands so you don't see the mountain of science that demolishes his position. I'm sure Dana can redirect you to a thread which is better for discussing this topic, and Santer.Moderator Response: [muoncounter] There is a thread for the ocean heating/cooling discussion here. Comments re thermal inertia of the oceans should go there. -
Trueofvoice at 03:10 AM on 23 January 2011It's the sun
LandyJim, We are well aware of ongoing efforts to better understand solar astronomy. Did you have point beyond asserting we just aren't as up-to-speed as you? -
Tom Curtis at 02:57 AM on 23 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Ron Crouch, I certainly agree that hydrocarbon emmissions will not stop by 2020. I think that was really my point - that while the FEU made an error in timing, the scenario they envisaged is still, almost unavoidably in the pipeline. -
Trueofvoice at 02:53 AM on 23 January 2011CO2 lags temperature
Hurleybird, You need to be more specific in your argument, as your last post contained not a single science-based refutation. "I don't believe it" is not an acceptable response to the role of CO2 as a forcing or feedback, nor does it address the validity of our understanding of Milankovitch Cycles. The Earth's tilt towards the sun changes. The planet warms. Warming oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere accelerating the warming process. What part of this do you have a problem with? -
Ron Crouch at 02:38 AM on 23 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
#23 Tom I've seen those arguments thrown around, but believe me, hydrocarbon emissions will continue to grow well beyond 2020. Despite the gnawing fact that Exxon/Mobil is playing both sides of the field at once, I must commend them for their current stance and studies into Global Warming. 2020 is unrealistic in that replacement technologies can't and won't be in place by that time to even make a dent in emissions. I can't say that during my lifetime that I have seen any improvements in the direction that humanity has chosen. It's an economy that is driven in large part by consumerism, and greed. There is in general no longer any concern among the world's citizenry for the state of the planet. It certainly is not a priority for the poor who have little understanding of science and who's lives are consumed with trying to stay alive. Meanwhile in the developed part of the world the concern is lacking due more to apathy than anything else. There are simply too many people who think that when Global Warming lands in their back yards that they only need to pick up the phone and dial 911 to seek relief. I wish I were an optimist when it comes to humanity's future, but based on all the scientific data that I've poured over during the last 30 years, I have reached a totally different conclusion. And when Exxon Mobil's annual report comes out sometime in the next few weeks it's going to contain some shocking revelations that have been largely silenced in the rest of the scientific community and ignored by governments. I know I risk being labelled a pariah by talking about the dangers of abrupt climate change (but really climate change is just one player in the total scheme of things). Someone has to keep that portion of the discussion alive. So pariah I am. There is a write-up on that coming report here. My apologies if I'm way off topic, but it annoys me that the future of all our children is being held for ransom.. -
Daniel Bailey at 02:13 AM on 23 January 2011Back from the Dead: Lost Open Mind Posts
FYI: Tamino has added this effort to his blogroll at Open Mind. Thanks again to all who have contributed. Missing a few scattered posts here and there but, except for January and February 2010, all now accounted for (remainder of 2010 to present still linked at Open Mind). The Yooper -
Eric (skeptic) at 01:56 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
This is figure 8 from Historical variability of sea ice edge position in the Nordic Seas which shows that the current decline is steeper than the long term decline but that there is a long term decline. -
snowhare at 01:51 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
Darn it. It didn't auto-hyperlink: Combined Summer Sea Ice Extent Minimum Months Chart -
snowhare at 01:49 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
A couple of months ago I put together a chart of the combined summer minimum months here: http://snowhare.com/climate/charts/global_summer_minimum_sea_ice_extent_1979_forward.png -
Eric (skeptic) at 01:31 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
#1, are there error bars available for the charts above? There are considerable fluctuations, for example in this dataset http://nsidc.org/data/g02169.html in local areas that suggest that the flatness in the early curves is incorrect. -
Ken Lambert at 01:16 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
michael sweet #65 7-8 years of Argo is hardly a short period in the context of a 16-17 year timeline on the Charts of OHC we are talking about. I have suggested in many threads about OHC that tethered buoys all measuring one tile of ocean at one time is the ideal system to get accurate OHC changes. I do not know how well Argo approaches this 'ideal' system, however 3500 now deployed has to be vastly better than the poor spatial coverage of XBT and preceding methods. -
Alexandre at 01:04 AM on 23 January 2011Spanish translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
Great job! I confess I will use some of their work to help me in some tricky bits of the translation. Portuguese is quite close to Spanish. MattJ #1 - Actually it means "the lie" - ironic all the same... -
michael sweet at 00:30 AM on 23 January 2011Monckton Myth #6: Global Sea Ice
James, I like your post and it makes good points. I think you should discuss the sea ice extent prior to 1979. The satelite data is best, but a lot of sea ice data exists before that time. People lived and drilled for oil in the Arctic before 1979. ->The Alaska oil pipeline was built in 1975. They needed to know the ice extent before they started drilling. The deniers like Monckton like to avoid this data since is shows that the ice is much worse off than it looks if you only look at the last 30 years. As John says: look at all the data. The data from the arctic is available at Cryosphere Today:
Up until 1950 the summer ice extent was 11 million km2. That had decreased to 9 mkm2 by the start of the satelite era. Why let the deniers get away with ignoring this 20% decrease? The winter extent decrease is much less, but still significant. In the 30's and 40's they took pictures from airplanes and the extent data is pretty good. The extent in 2007 was only 50% of the historic sea ice extent.
This graph from Tamino shows the ice extent in Antarctic: 
The data from the Antarctic is not as good as the Arctic- no-one lives there so there is not as much interest. Still the data from 1950 on is reasonable and shows dramatic decrease in both the summer and winter before 1979 when they launched the satelites. The current "increases" in Antarctic sea ice do not come near the historic sea ice data. In addition, this year the Antarctic sea ice area anomaly is -300,000 km2 (as of Jan 20). It looks like the trend line will be even closer to zero unless the ice stops melting in the Antarctic in the next week. The final measurements will be in about 6 weeks.
We need to consider all the data and not let the deniers get away with ignoring the dramatic decrease in sea ice extent that is well known to have occured in the time before satelite measurements were started. AGW did not start in 1980, why start the sea ice measurements then?
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Ed Davies at 23:44 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
fydijkstra @36:It's true that the oceans absorb a huge amount of heat. The oceans are the buffer system of the earth's climate. Yes. Why would the oceans give this heat back to the atmosphere? 1. Because, on occasion the atmosphere is cooler than the ocean and 2. Because evaporation from the ocean resulting in precipitation over land results in the transfer of latent heat. But this is missing the point, see below. After freezing the greenhouse gasses,... I assume here you mean human emissions of greenhouse gases going to nearly zero so that the atmospheric concentration stays the same rather than freezing like that which happens to CO₂ at Mars' poles in winter. :-) the oceans will transfer the heat to colder places, i.e. the deep ocean, Yes. However, this is a slow process as most of the ocean is stable with the denser water at the bottom so most of the transfer of energy to the deep waters happens by circulation at the poles. This is beside the point, though. When equilibrium is reached, by definition, the ocean isn't doing this any more. Even with equilibrium with only the surface waters or the surface and deep but not abyssal waters the story doesn't change that much, I think, because the circulation is such a slow process. but not back to the atmosphere (second law of thermodynamics). As noted above there's no reason for heat not to move back to the atmosphere. However, what is important is that as the ocean reaches equilibrium it doesn't transfer heat back any more than it was before but it does stop absorbing heat from the atmosphere resulting in the temperature of the atmosphere increasing as a result of the net input of heat from the Sun. This is net input which has been happening since the GHGs were emitted but which previously was going to the ocean. Absent the ocean heat sink the temperature of the atmosphere and continents will increase until the radiation balance is re-established. -
Alexandre at 23:36 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
That of course, besides the mistake already spotted in the main article, which demands a little more thinking, and therefore is "less obvious" to the layman. He assumes the effect is immediate, and ignores other influences that offset the greenhouse warming. Certainly not an excusable mistake coming from a working scientist like him. -
Alexandre at 23:31 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
fydijkstra #38 says the FEU error seems more obvious than the Lindzen's statements. Not really so. Even a layman can spot gross incorrections in Lindzen's statement. He says, for example, that larger sensitivities are based on models. Maybe a working climatologist like him is unaware of all the senstivity calculations based on empirical evidence?
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Ed Davies at 23:23 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
RW1: 1) thermal linkage between the atmosphere and the ocean is fairly weak so seasonal variability of the atmosphere can be much larger than that of the ocean (though seasonal variability would be greater on a planet with no oceans). 2) thermal linkage between the atmosphere and the ocean is fairly weak so the time taken for atmospheric changes of temperature to bring the ocean to equilibrium are long. These facts don't contradict each other, they are complementary. -
fydijkstra at 23:20 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
This post may be right, in that the reaction of the global warming community to the FEU error was more appropriate than the reaction of the sceptic community to Lindzen's supposed error. However, the FEU error seems more obvious than the Lindzen's statements. It's true that the oceans absorb a huge amount of heat. The oceans are the buffer system of the earth's climate. Why would the oceans give this heat back to the atmosphere? After freezing the greenhouse gasses, the oceans will transfer the heat to colder places, i.e. the deep ocean, but not back to the atmosphere (second law of thermodynamics). The effect of this heat distribution through the oceans on the climate is unpredictable with the current state of knowledge. Lindzen can be right or wrong. The sceptic community could have reacted more critical. So, this case study does not end in 1 to 0 for warmists/sceptics but merely 1 to 0.5. But there are other cases, where the scores are opposite. I just mention two: (1) in the controversy between Mann and McIntyre the integrity score of the warmist community against the sceptic community is at the highest 0.2 to 0.8. (2) in the controversy about the hot spot (Douglass versus Santer et al) the score is about 0.5 to 0.5. The issue is still undecided, although the warmist community insists that Santer et al proved the existence of the hot spot. -
Alexandre at 22:54 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Hey, how come Watts is backing up Lindzen's claim? Now he says the observed warming is almost the full effect of doubled CO2? Wasn't it just an illusion due to ill-placed thermometers? -
nealjking at 22:18 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
RW1: Another way of explaining what is going on: A cyclical variation in temperature gets propagated into the ground according to the heat equation. The solutions to this equation are: a) sinusoidally varying in time, with the same frequency as the driving temperature; and b) exponentially dying as you proceed into the ground. The faster the frequency, the more quickly the wave dies out; conversely, the slower the frequency, the more slowly the wave dies out. The result is that for higher-frequency variations (diurnal and seasonal), the penetration of the wave (and thus the involvement of the ground) is much less than for the long-period (multi-decadal) variations. In the special case of the straight linear increase in temperature, there is no limit to the depth of the entailed layer: it goes on forever. The situation with the ocean is similar, although fluid mixing confuses the temperature profile and can also entail further water at deeper depths. So your observation that temperature changes follow the driving sunlight doesn't negate the fact that the deeper layers of the ground and ocean participate much more fully in "thermal inertia" at lower frequencies. -
Tom Curtis at 18:47 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
RW1 @29, you seem to alleging that because a seasonal cycle which results in a 200+ w/m^2 variation in insolation at mid latitudes causes an appreciable change in temperature within a year, that therefore an approximately 4 w/m^2 forcing will heat the ocean to the equilibrium temperatue in less than a year. You allege this despite the fact that the lower the difference between net energy in and out, the lower the rate of heating; and you allege this despite the fact that even for seasonal variations the ocean never reach the equilibrium temperatures associated with the maximum and minimum of insolation. Your argument transparently does not follow. -
gpwayne at 18:45 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Nice work Dana - as usual. -
Riccardo at 18:03 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
RW1 there's a seasonal cycle in the temperature of the oceans too, they do participate and due to their thermal mass they strongly smooth the seasonal cycle. The same is true for the diurnal cycle, where the forcing is much larger. It would be much, much worst if the revolution of the earth around the sun stops or the earth was always facing the sun like the moon with the earth. -
RW1 at 17:45 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
KR (RE: 27), "Oh, my. Short term (surface layers) versus deep ocean - yearly cycles will only penetrate the upper layers of the ocean, whereas consistent, multiple year trends will affect the deeper ocean." I think you may not understand what thermal mass actually means in the context being discussed here. It's the amount of heat required to change a body's equilibrium temperature by a specific amount - in this case roughly the average surface temperature of the oceans. Of course multiple year, decade and even century long temperature changes will affect the deeper ocean temperatures, but the deeper oceans don't participate in the thermal mass of the planet. If they did, there couldn't be anywhere near the seasonal variability we have each year. -
RW1 at 17:08 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
I guess my senses are wrong and the large seasonal variability is a figment of my imagination. -
Tom Curtis at 16:56 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
RW1 @24, the following graph shows measured temperature trends in the ocean as a function of depth and latitude:
(From Purkey and Johnson 2010 as reproduced by Skeptical Science.)
You will notice that warming down to 2000 meters is strong at almost every location where warming is present on the surface. You will also notice a strong warming trend down to the ocean bottom around 55 and 65 degrees south. Averaged over the area studied, this amounts to a substantive warming. An even stronger abyssal warming has been found by other studies at about 60 degrees North, associated with the thermohaline circulation.
I need to emphasise, these are not the results of models. These are the results of measurements. Consequently the idea that only the surface of the ocean contributes to the effective thermal mass of the planet is in direct denial of observations, and in fact in direct denial of known observations for over a decade. Your advisers about thermal mass are either in complete ignorance of the relevant science, or are deliberately misleading you.
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A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
RW1 - Oh, my. Short term (surface layers) versus deep ocean - yearly cycles will only penetrate the upper layers of the ocean, whereas consistent, multiple year trends will affect the deeper ocean. Inertia, time lag, the great flywheel of the ocean temperature - it takes time to affect the overall mass of the oceans, and simple yearly (or even multiple year issues like ENSO) will not change the baselines. That takes decades, the "30 year of significance" for climate trends. Not overnight, not seasonally, but over decades, RW1 - only then are you changing the energy levels of the ocean mass. Response time is not only a serious issue - it's one of the primary issues. -
Oceans are cooling
Berényi - I have seen a consistent slant in your postings. In all cases, if there is any uncertainty whatsoever, you put forth the propositions that global warming isn't happening/is less than expected/that negative feedbacks will save us. Now, I will be one of the first to say that OHC measurements are not the best data we have. And that satellite TOA measurements are precise, but not as accurate as we would like. But - Consistency is not just the hobgoblin of little minds. The majority of the indicators (ice melt, surface temps, flora region migration, physics of CO2, etc.) point in a singular direction. OHC measures are clearly imprecise, poorly calibrated, and only measure the top 700 meters of rather deep oceans. Are they the Michelson–Morley experiment of global warming, as you propose, or are they simply a rather imprecise measurement??? This is experimental science, not a logical exercise in a toy mathematical domain, Berényi. The mass of evidence indicates continuing global warming. Occams's razor would indicate that the error(s) are in the OHC measurements and are limits thereof, rather than in everything else we know. Please - consider the fact that this is experimental science, not a logical proposition with fixed premises, and look at the weight of evidence. -
Tom Curtis at 16:38 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Dhogaza @25, I am not sure where that came from. The graph I refered to was the one at Real Climate article discussing the error in the FEU report. It shows the IPCC projections of temperature increases under various scenarios. Under those projections, the temperature reachs approximately 2.4 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures (or 1.5 degrees above current temperatures)around 2050, or thirty years after they were assumed to reach that level in the FEU report. I doubt the IPCC expects the current solar minimum to last 30 years, and I certainly do not. -
dhogaza at 16:23 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Tom Curtis: "Ron Crouch @20, my estimate by eyeballing the graph at Real Climate is that they are out by 30 years on assuming business as usual. " So you're invested in the belief that the current solar minimum will continue for the next 30 years? Note: if it does, it says nothing about sensitivity to CO2 forcing. It simply means the sun's unusually cold. When it warms again (bets are off the current minimum continuing another 30 years), things will heat up very quickly. You do realize that there's some truth to the denialist claims that "it's the sun!" though given the current extended minimum, that cry works against them. Which is why they're so invested in "it's the sun, but not the bits we measure or understand theoretically!" meme. -
Daniel Bailey at 15:43 PM on 22 January 2011The Climate Show #5: Green roofs and Brisbane floods
Re: Camburn (9) Veteran posters like Albatross rely on using HTML tags to make a clean presentation, as you note. Here's some basic tags:
Practice by using the Preview button.
The Yooper
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RW1 at 15:40 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
The whole ocean doesn't participate in the thermal mass of the planet. If it did and the equilibrium time was decades, there would be little if any seasonal variability in each hemisphere each year. -
Tom Curtis at 15:21 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Ron Crouch @20, my estimate by eyeballing the graph at Real Climate is that they are out by 30 years on assuming business as usual. Another way of looking at it is that if we continue business as usual till 2020 (almost guaranteed policy now due to current inaction) then cease all CO2 emissions all together, they will be within a whisker of the correct value by 2050, and the Earth's climate will continue to approach the value they give for the remainder of the century. -
Tom Curtis at 15:14 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Humanity Rules @12, even assuming that all heating in the ocean due to the greenhouse effect is trapped in the mixed layer of the ocean (approx the upper 70 meters), and a climate sensitivity of 0.5 degrees per doubling of CO2, it takes around 5 years to heat the ocean surface sufficiently to achieve radiative balance. On the same assumptions but the more realistic climate sensitivity of 2.8 degrees C, that pushes out to several decades. But the heat is not trapped in the mixed layer. Both measurement and modelling show that only a third of the heat stored in ocean is trapped in that layer, with a third trapped in the main thermocline (approx 70 to 300 meters) and another third trapped in the deep ocean. That is very consistent with the results of modelling which suggest that only 66% of equilibrium warming will be achieved in 30 years if green house gas levels are held constant at an particular level. More details at my blog. (I had hoped to link to an argument at this site specifically discussing this issue, but unfortunatly I could not find it. Perhaps Dana or some other regular who knows the site well could provide a link.) Quite independant of that analysis, as Dana @16 points out, the measured inequality of incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere proves there is heating still in the pipeline, although it does not by itself indicate how long it will take to restore equilibrium. -
Daniel Bailey at 15:06 PM on 22 January 2011Back from the Dead: Lost Open Mind Posts
Added lost Open Mind links through December 31, 2009. H/T to Open Mind reader DTurtle. The Yooper -
dana1981 at 14:53 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
NYJ #17 - you got it. Lindzen plays the game that because there are uncertainties regarding the size of the aerosol forcing, we can just assume the net forcing is zero. On Bart's blog (comment #9), I'm in an argument with a 'skeptic' who's playing this same game, arguing that Lindzen didn't "ignore" the aerosol cooling because he mentioned it. It's a silly game that Lindzen allows his followers to play because he didn't ignore the cooling factor in the article, he just ignored it in his calculation. Ron #20 - it's true, there is worth in the FEU paper. It's unfortunate that they distracted from its worth by making this major error. -
sailrick at 14:47 PM on 22 January 2011CO2 lags temperature
hurleybird I'm just a layman, but it appears to me that you would need to refute over 100 years of physics and chemistry to disprove the greenhouse effect. -
Ron Crouch at 14:09 PM on 22 January 2011A Case Study in Climate Science Integrity
Let's face it, the FEU may be off by who knows how many years, but at some point global average temperatures will likely reach that 2.4oC level. So from that perspective there is still some worth to the FEU paper. I'd have liked to have seen some comment on that aspect of the paper. Perhaps under a different thread?
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