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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 118451 to 118500:

  1. Could global brightening be causing global warming?
    RSVP: the 1900 GHG value in Fig 2 is ~0.2, while the 2000 value is ~2.7 or so. That seems like much more than a tripling to me! It's rather scary to see the GHG forcing was growing exponentially from ~1940 through to the late 1980s or so, where it seems to have tapered off dramatically. Does anyone have any idea why the sudden drop in the rate of increase c.1990? Is it to do with changing patterns of energy use, or something else?
  2. Could global brightening be causing global warming?
    Interesting to see Fig 2 showing that GHG forcing has tripled in the last century when GHG concentration has only increased by a factor of 1.5.
  3. Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements
    Thanks Riccardo for the comment For example, think about downwelling and upwelling and mixing of ocean waters. These movements are not well know and may produce a large unaccounted variability in the short run but tend to average out over longer periods. But we have a hundred years of data to average over. The change in energy from the sun between summer and winter over a hemisphere (N or S) is approximately constant and much larger than most other factors and the consequent temperature change is also large (I would guess about 20C - much more at the poles and less near the equator -) and also roughly constant but with more variability for the reasons you mentioned. I guess I should just try to calculate it. I recall Open Mind had a few blogs on how much various orbital factors affected how much sunlight a hemisphere received.
  4. Could global brightening be causing global warming?
    Did not Lord Monckton make an argument once for Global Cooling? You know, the one based on a falsified version of an UAH globally averaged satellite based temperature chart, conveniently cut off at 1998 to show an artefactual drop in temperature? Pray tell, Lord Monckton, which is it? Global Cooling or Global Warming through whatever means?
  5. There's no empirical evidence
    cherrypicked at 11:46 AM, just to add to my earlier post to help get it into perspective and hopefully not further confuse the matter, temperature drops about 7oC for every 1000m increase in altitude above sea level, that is about 1oC for every 140m increase in height, all other things being equal.
  6. There's no empirical evidence
    cherrypicked at 11:46 AM, the qualification "or" will apply if you consider how conditions can change given IR radiation is always from the warmer body to the cooler. The relative differences in state between the surface and the atmosphere can be that the surface can be warmer than the atmosphere, OR both the surface and the atmosphere are in equilibrium, OR the surface is cooler than the atmosphere. It is always going to be one OR the other depending on all the variables that combine to produce the climate that exists on this planet.
  7. cherrypicked at 11:46 AM on 31 May 2010
    There's no empirical evidence
    It can't be a bit of both as you suggest. Warming the atmosphere can only lead to warming the surface if at least some of the warming is directed downwards. Specifically, radiative trapping produces (some) surface radiative forcing. But that is not what Evans said. He said it is one *or* the other. He didn't say it's a bit of both. Also, the sentence makes no sense if we substitute "or" for "and", so it is unlikely a typo. However, "caused by" would fit.
  8. Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    For those of you with other phones (Pre, Android, etc.) you might consider using a good RSS reader app as a stop-gap. There are XML RSS feeds for both the ARguments and the Blog, so if you can read those feeds using a mobile reader, you're golden.
  9. cherrypicked at 10:58 AM on 31 May 2010
    There's no empirical evidence
    Thank you for the detailed article. I have a question? In the section, co2 traps heat, you quote Evans 2006: The results lead the authors to conclude that "this experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming." Yet the opening sentence in the link you provide, Evans states: "The earth's climate system is warmed by 35 C due to the emission of downward infrared radiation by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (surface radiative forcing) or by the absorption of upward infrared radiation (radiative trapping)." It is the use of the conjunction "or" that I am querying. Which is it? Is it surface radiative forcing, or is it radiative trapping? I am *not* suggesting the above statement in some way invalidates Evans' proof, but it does cast doubt on the mechanism responsible for the warming. For completeness, I must point out that this sentence does not appear in the linked article - only the abstract.
    Response: "Which is it? Is it surface radiative forcing, or is it radiative trapping?"

    A little from column A, a little from column B. Greenhouse gases both absorb upward infrared radiation which warms the atmosphere, and also scatter or reemit infrared radiation in all directions, some of which heads back to Earth.
  10. Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    doug: Are we talking a phone OS flame war, or a PC OS flame war, or both? Shall we have a flame war about what to have the flame war about? :-P John: very cool, more exposure for this wonderful site. Good to hear an update about the Android app - I await it with bated breath... Hmm, I'm pretty sure that shouldn't be "baited breath"... oh, no, a grammar flame war! :-D
  11. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    Just to appreciate the difficulties in estimating ice volume, and the need for caution about drawing conclusions from relatively small changes in estimates, the accuracy that applies to measurements made needs to be taken on board. The acknowledged error involved in measuring ice thickness ABOVE the waterline is plus/minus 50mm. Because only about 10% of the ice is above the waterline this error multiplies to plus/minus 500mm which is very significant when first year ice is generally less than 2m thick, meaning less than 200mm freeboard and multi-year ice about 3m thick, meaning 300mm freeboard. All other estimates such as density have their own inbuilt errors, but the error involved in estimating actual ice volume comes down to this relatively large error involved in simply measuring the sea ice freeboard. Even as new technology and techniques improve the accuracy of measuring the ice freeboard, it will be still subject to a factor of 10. Even once that improved accuracy been established, it doesn't change the fact that all measurements obtained in the past will still have those large inbuilt errors which have to be taken into account when comparisons are made with any historical data.
  12. Berényi Péter at 09:25 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    #22 Riccardo at 06:47 AM on 31 May, 2010 you're just playing war games No, it's the US Navy's job, not mine. And they do play it all the time. It includes verifying the forecast systems operated by smart guys using independent means. I reckon they send out patrols to check model forecast occasionally, ordered to report back their findings. Understanding the ice thickness distribution and its variability is important in both short-term operational forecasts and longer-term climate studies. Model-derived ice thickness fields are useful in obtaining a large-scale, but detailed picture of ice distribution and, more importantly, an understanding of its temporal variability. #25 michael sweet at 08:11 AM on 31 May, 2010 the other is a derived number by a web blogger with unknown error bars You must refer to my attempt. But you are overestimating my role by saying the numbers are derived by me. The algorithm I have run is actually pretty straightforward, the curves come from the PIPS 2.0 24 hour forecast maps. As there are no error bars supplied by PIPS, of course I could not pull out one from thin air. All I can say is errors introduced by the transformation are negligible. Casting doubts does not contribute to understanding. As for sea ice volume, please check the article Has Arctic sea ice returned to normal?, this site.

    What the science says...

    Sea ice extent tells us what about the state of the sea ice at the ocean's surface, not what's happening below. Arctic sea ice has been steadily thinning, even in the last few years while extent increased slightly. Consequently, the total amount of Arctic sea ice in 2008 and 2009 are the lowest on record.

    BTW, ice volume graph provided by the Polar Ice Center does not have error bars either.
  13. Climate sensitivity is low
    here is a more readable formatting of Lin 2010. ;)
  14. michael sweet at 08:11 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    I would point out that one estimate of volume is from ice scientists who have estimated their error and the other is a derived number by a web blogger with unknown error bars. You have to choose how you determine what data is worth considering. The difficulty in determining ice volume is one reason why NSIDC uses ice extent. The ice extent is a firmer number than the ice volume. With luck NSIDC will comment on this in their next monthly report.
  15. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    Marcel, as i understand it they both "assimilate" data. Each day PIPS restart the forecast with actual data if their previous forecast was out more than a certain threshold. It's about the same process used for PIOMASS. I think the difference lies in the details. Apart from being the more recent of the two, PIOMAS includes a so called thickness and enthalpy distribution sea ice model which takes into account the rheology of ice and ice ridging. Apparently PIPS does not. I'm not able to go any further on these details, we should ask a specialist.
  16. Peter Hogarth at 07:36 AM on 31 May 2010
    Climate sensitivity is low
    I am not sure this paper has been mentioned yet. See Lin 2010. Obtains 3.1K for sensitivity, constraining the estimates a little to between 2.8K and 3.7K
  17. Marcel Bökstedt at 07:14 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    Hmm.. lets just leave what WUWT writes out of this equation. And it's best that BP does not annoy the Navy, they can be nasty if they decide to retaliate. It would still be interesting to explain the differences between the estimates of ice volume. Could it be that the fact that PIPS is essentially a forecast makes it less reliable? (Maybe PIOMAS can use data obtained later than the fact to estimate ice thickness?)
  18. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    Berényi Péter, it's not about what I think but what THEY say, at least in the published papers. Maybe you have access to secret informations, do you? If not, you're just playing war games, not science. I know you can do much better than blindly follow people at WUWT, be skeptical of what they say there too.
  19. Berényi Péter at 06:44 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    #19 michael sweet at 05:27 AM on 31 May, 2010 The red color shows ice AT LEAST 5 meters thick. Much of that ice was 10 or more meters thick (some was over 30 meters thick) in past years. You cannot integrate it as 5 meters thick.This results in underestimating the ice volume in past years Perhaps it was. But there is not much red in any PIPS map. For example the one for 14 September 1999 does not have any.
  20. Berényi Péter at 06:30 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    #16 Marcel Bökstedt at 02:12 AM on 31 May, 2010 The difference between the navy data and PIOMAS is striking, even if the graph above of navy data only covers one particular date (is that correct BP?) Yes, that's correct. It is only for 28 May. I could do it for the entire year, but a huge amount of data (about 250 MB) is required to be downloaded and I am not sure the Navy would tolerate it :) Anyway, I've also did it for 14 September, the day Arctic sea ice extent was lowest in 2007. At that time of the year ice volume inside 70N is about all there is. Interesting to note that mid September ice volume was lowest in 2008, not in 2007. The low in 1999 is also unheard of. #17 Riccardo at 03:06 AM on 31 May, 2010 PIPS is designed to predict ice concentration essentially near the ice edge and it is tested against this field I don't think so. For submarines armed with strategic nuclear missiles ice thickness is a deciding factor anywhere in the Arctic. They simply can not do their job if the ice above is too thick. The Navy also have its own devices to monitor ice conditions including submarines, spy satellites, aircraft and drift buoys. PIPS do have a sophisticated data assimilation facility developed in more than twenty years.
    Moderator Response: [Sph] Bad images removed.
  21. Peter Hogarth at 06:15 AM on 31 May 2010
    Why Greenland's ice loss matters
    FerdiEgb at 06:30 AM on 29 May, 2010 michael sweet at 01:06 AM on 31 May, 2010 easily beat me to a response on similar lines. We see the same Winter variance/Summer "clipping" to just above melt point over the Arctic sea ice.
  22. michael sweet at 05:27 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    BP: I just looked at the Navy website. The red color shows ice AT LEAST 5 meters thick. Much of that ice was 10 or more meters thick (some was over 30 meters thick)in past years. You cannot integrate it as 5 meters thick. This results in underestimating the ice volume in past years. This alone is probably enough to explain the difference between you and PIOMAS.
  23. michael sweet at 04:16 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    WUWT has integrated the colors of other peoples ice data unsuccessfully in the past (note here that BP got a lower value than WUWT). While BP has done an interesting analysis, I would not say that the US Navy has said what they think the ice volume is. BP has said what HE thinks the ice volume is based on the Navy graph. This type of analysis has many hidden errors since the Navy graph is not intended for this use. I agree with Riccardo, PIOMAS is intended for this use and will have lower error. PIOMAS undoubtedly has a high resolution map of the Navy graph that they consider in their analysis (unless the Navy gets their data from PIOMAS).
  24. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    Marcel Bökstedt, sometimes happens that critical thinking efficiency drops to zero. A post on WUWT is enough to spread the(ir) "truth". I do not have the answer to your question, obviously, but it should be noticed that PIPS is designed to predict ice concentration essentially near the ice edge and it is tested against this field (see for example here and here). On the contrary, PIOMAS is designed and tested to calculate volume. I'm not that surprised that the two do not match.
  25. Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
    JSFarmer, apart of Ian Plimer, (professor of mining geology and director of a few mining companies in Australia) and Mark Durkin (director of the infamous "The Great Global Warming Swindle") I don't think you can find many others disagreeing with your question #1. As for question #2, i've never heard criticism on the numbers.
  26. Marcel Bökstedt at 02:12 AM on 31 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    The difference between the navy data and PIOMAS is striking, even if the graph above of navy data only covers one particular date (is that correct BP?) According to PIOMAS, there has been a loss of around 9000 km^3 of ice in this period 1999-2010. The navy data shows almost no loss of ice, certainly much less than 9000 km^3. Does anyone have any idea about what is going on here?
  27. On temperature and CO2 in the past
    In #16, Mr. Camel states: "could not find any declaration that the CO2 concentration was driving the temperature changes" However, Riccardo stated this: "... starting about a couple of centuries ago, the system has been suddenly pushed out of its shell and moved to a completely different domain. The slope of the [temp-CO2] curve is hugely different, indeed almost flat, which suggests that the driver of the climate is different from anything seen in half a million years." (Italics added). Perhaps if one drops back a bit and asks "What has driven this hugely different behavior of the temp-CO2 system?" See the following graph: Notes: 1. De-seasoned atmospheric CO2 from 3 widely-spaced sample stations (Mauna Loa, Barrow and Palmer, Antarctica) 2. Composite Law Dome Ice Core (3 sample locations) Ice core air age used as time axis. 3. Carbon emission data Trailing 5 years (residence time?) summed and expressed in gigatons. Looks like a trend to me (pardon the shameless extrapolation into the future). So let's turn the question back on the reader: What explains the relationship between increased burning of fossil fuels and increased atmospheric CO2? And what else do you offer for Riccardo's hugely different driver?
  28. It's the sun
    JSFarmer, look yourself. The picture is from a NASA site.
  29. Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
    Sorry to ask such a basic question, but the threads get too complicated for me. The rebuttal argument was very concise for this topic and I'm curious if there is any dispute. I took a quick look aound and didn't find one. Regardless of the other effects of volcanoes, or what happens to the gasses, does anyone dispute the numbers stated in the response that: 1. Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. 2. Human CO2 emissions are around 29 billion tonnes per year. ? Thanks
  30. michael sweet at 01:06 AM on 31 May 2010
    Why Greenland's ice loss matters
    FerdiEgb, The surface summer temperatures in Greenland are limited in their rise by the phase change of ice to water. The massive ice sheet creates it's own temperature. That does not mean that melt is less, only that there is not a large temperature response. Other measures are required to obtain an accurate picture of the situation. The rising melt line shows the situation more clearly.
  31. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    Its been noted elsewhere that summer arctic ice loss is accelerating. Has anyone noticed a systematic asymmetry between the summer minimum and winter maximum ice extents? Both are decreasing, but the accelerating rate of decrease in the summer outpaces the somewhat linear decrease in the winter ice extent.
    Here's a graph:

    Notes: Ice extent from month-by-month data files for the years 1979-2009; expressed as a percentage of 1979 values, hence 1979=0. "Summer min" is the average of the 3 months of least extent (which are Aug-Sep-Oct), while winter max is the average of the corresponding three months (Feb-Mar-Apr) for each year in the dataset. Rather than plot these data as a time series, I've found it far more interesting to plot such data vs. a relevant independent variable on the 'x-axis'. In this case, I've used temperature: LOTI for latitude N64-N90, adjusting those temperature index values so that 0 falls at 1979. Note that this index is in hundredths of deg C.
    Hope that explanation of relatively minor data manipulation and presentation was vaguely comprehensible!
    The best-fit functions for each season (the central curves in each set of three) are shown with +/- 1 stdev, as labeled. The two seasonals intersect at 1979, which is (0,0) as explained above. I couldn't resist the forward projection, but its only 2 years. I suppose this is a symptom of the formation of short-lived "new ice" each winter and the loss of longer-lived "old ice". So don't buy the claim that ice area is recovering based on a couple of cold winters.
  32. Berényi Péter at 22:49 PM on 30 May 2010
    Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    #13 tobyjoyce at 18:57 PM on 30 May, 2010 After dipping into WUWT, a lot is been spouted about the U.S.Navy monitoring of Arctic Ice I have checked it. The claim May arctic ice volume inside 70N has grown by 25% since 2008 is bogus. The actual growth is only 13.6%. Here is the US Navy Polar Ice Prediction System. As it makes forecasts only for the next 24 hours, I suppose it can not be too far from reality and they must have some means to check it. Submarines, perhaps? Ice over the Arctic having some strategic military relevance, they must not be badly off the mark I suppose. Except if it were classified and public version is only for confusing the enemy :) Anyway. They do not publish tabular data, just pictures like this one: [img src="http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/pips2_thick/2010/pips2_thick.2010053000.gif">
    Moderator Response: [Sph] Bad images removed
  33. There's no empirical evidence
    PaulK, it's not clear to me what you mean by "the assumptions in your version of the heat balance equation". Which assumptions did "I" make? Did you find something wrong? I understand we're back to the beginning but I'm a bit lost with this discussion.
  34. It's the sun
    Thanks.. I clicked on the link. It was a little more difficult for me to undestand- lots of acronyms. But I will try. It talks about TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) and a debate over how to measure it. I tried to gleen sunspot info from it. It appears to use sunspot activity to reconstruct TSI. TSI corrolates to sunspots. The argument is complicated for me- trying to focus on sunspot activity, the skeptic claim is that it is increasing. The science response says it is decreasing. (confirmed by corrolating TSI in the other link) Is that correct- sunspot activity is decreasing?
  35. There's no empirical evidence
    Riccardo #95, Erratum. I should have written ALSO equal to -F*exp(-t/tau). (A Taylor expansion of this form and then curtailment of the higher order terms yields your form of the heat equation.)
  36. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    After dipping into WUWT, a lot is been spouted about the U.S.Navy monitoring of Arctic Ice. Where does the Navy monitoring fit in with the civilian monitoring?
  37. There's no empirical evidence
    Riccardo #95, Effectively, yes. Or at least it would be the same if one were to accept the assumptions in your version of the heat balance equation (and change the sign convention on the perturbation). With these assumptions, it is ALSO equal to -F*exp(t/tau) - the perturbation from a single impulse forcing.
  38. Latest GRACE data on Greenland ice mass
    John, what's the baseline for the ice mass anomalies? I looked for this in Velicogna 2009 but maybe missed it. Meanwhile AMSU-A is still looking scary. I was rash enough to blog about it in April and it's still not disappointing. The thing is, we aren't meant to obsess about short-term changes because natural variability will overwhelm the long-term trend if we look at too short a period, but natural variability should be pushing temperatures down not up over this period. I'm expecting someone to steal Spencer's email any day now.
  39. Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements
    MikeCoombes, on a yearly bases you would need to account for the internal movements of heat, someone (inappropriately, in my opinion) calls them "internal forcings". For example, think about downwelling and upwelling and mixing of ocean waters. These movements are not well know and may produce a large unaccounted variability in the short run but tend to average out over longer periods.
  40. On temperature and CO2 in the past
    jyyh, this is a good point, the distribution of the density of points is not uniform. It's higher at the two extremes, expecially in the cold phase region. This means that the climate system "prefers" to stay in the cold phase and sometimes switched to the warm phase, the two more stable phases. They are called stable attractors.
  41. Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    Well done, the more of this sort of thing the better.
  42. Robust warming of the global upper ocean
    Ken #67 The one thing you always ignore in raising this argument is the importance of measurement error, although you will always report the bottom end of the uncertainty to try and support an "AGW isn't terribly important" position. An explicit acknowledgment of the size of error terms, and accounting for the full range of possible values (not cherry picking the range at which you will consider) is important. The other area your argument is deficient, which we've been through before is that you will only consider data at very short time durations. In order to improve the validity of your argument you need to consider longer time durations which would fit the definition of "climate". At the moment, you're really looking at "weather" and claiming that it's climate.
  43. On temperature and CO2 in the past
    Great presentation. I see there's a more thinly dotted area in the domain occupied for 420000 years, at about a quarter down from the oval top. Would this be the transitional times between glacials and interglacials?
  44. Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    cool, now i need to update my phone. doug, lol, but this is a climate site, maybe somewhere else?
  45. Latest GRACE data on Greenland ice mass
    Wes, the myth that you're repeating is this idea that-because it might have been warmer in one region of the world than global temperatures today-that this means we have nothing to worry about. There is evidence that Greenland was-at the *peak* of the MWP-as warm as temperatures are today (based on 18-O isotope levels in the ice), but this says nothing about the temperature in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. What also needs to be remembered is that all the evidence suggests that the warm period that gave rise to the Greenland colony occurred over the space to more than 4 centuries-wheras the warming of the late 20th century has occurred in the space of barely 4 decades. Its highly probable that a more rapid *rate* of warming might have different impacts on Greenland's ice than all previous examples of relatively slow warming in the past.
  46. Doug Bostrom at 13:13 PM on 30 May 2010
    Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    Amazing how fragmented the phone market is. How about we start an OS flame war? Something we can all disagree on!
  47. mothincarnate at 11:18 AM on 30 May 2010
    Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    Awesome! I never actually checked up if you answered about my question regarding the Nokia app, but I'm happy to hear it's available. Thanks John!
  48. Skeptical Science now a Nokia app
    Palm Pre Plus app? Now that Palm is about to be part of HP and is on Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint? Pretty please? With your sweetener-of-choice on top?
  49. Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements
    I was wondering if it might be possible to estimate climate sensitivity from yearly temperature changes in each hemisphere. The forcing would be from the changes in the amount of sunlight, not CO2, but I understand that the sensitivity should be the same to at least first order. Also the heat transport from one hemisphere to the other should not be as great an effect as just using the tropics. There could also be interesting hemispheric differences because of the differing land to ocean ratios and the amount of surface snow affecting albedo. Am I totally off base? Thanks.
  50. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    One more to add to the robust list. NPEO North Pole Environmental Observatory http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/index.html Two automated observatories are placed, and tracked, pn the central Arctic ice-flow. Excellent meteorological support, and live pictures daily.

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