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RSVP at 20:26 PM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Even if the current trend in global warming is actually anthropogenic, (and due solely to CO2 emissions), all it takes is one huge natural disturbance, or change on the part of nature to make anthropogenic forcing completely irrelevant (at least for a time). Or is this not conceivable? On the other hand, as per chris #22, even if the Earths temperature did rise 10 degrees for 500 years due to a comet, you would still have to baseline the problem from the new mean, and consider only extra forcings due to CO2 and sunlight. In other words, Paz, it doesnt matter how much heat is coming from the bottom of the sea due to hotspots and fissures.Response: Man-made warming is not due to CO2 emissions only - there are also warming contributions from ozone, methane, contrails, nitrous oxide, CFCs. But the warming from CO2 is both the strongest forcing and the fastest rising. -
Berényi Péter at 11:53 AM on 19 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Riccardo at 22:56 PM on 17 January, 2010: "You will easily find a lot of papers on the dry bias and possible recalibration of radiosonde data" No, not easily. I have fond something though. INSTRUMENTS AND OBSERVING METHODS REPORT No. 85 WMO RADIOSONDE HUMIDITY SENSOR INTERCOMPARISON PHASE I: Laboratory Test Central Aerological Observatory Dolgoprudny, Russian Federation June 1995 - June 1997 A. Balagurov, A. Kats, N. Krestyannikova (Russian Federation) PHASE II: Field Test NASA Wallops Flight Facility Virginia, United States 8 - 26 September 1995 F. Schmidlin (United States) WMO/TD-No. 1305 2006 http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/IMOP/publications/IOM-85_RSO-RH-Phase_I-II/IOM-85_RsoHumiditySensors_Phase-I-II.pdf The analysis is thorough. And it was performed in 1995-97. More than ten years ago. I don't quite understand why was it published only in 2006. It should be enough to do the instrument recalibration job up to the 300 hPa level, verifying the long term humidity trend up there this way. I can see the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis is going on. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/guide/Data/ncep-ncar_reanalysis.html However, I was not able to find reference to the WMO Radiosonde Humidity Sensor Intercomparision, which would be an absolute must. It may be my fault, a briefing would be welcome. So the NCEP reanalysis dataset is either uncorrected for known instrumental biases or Paltridge, Arking & Pook have revealed a gaping hole in current theory which is based on constant RH above 850 hPa. In the first case your statement "many scientists around the world are still working on this issue" lacks credibility. A job like this taking more than ten years to be done properly is flagrancy itself. Otherwise the average climate model is falsified. Water vapor feedback in terrestrial photosphere is negative. It is as simple as that. As for surfacestations.org. You know full well the quality of individual stations (or the lack of it) is not documented nearly as well in reanalysis studies as by those volunteers. One would wish for such a check on a global scale. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/ "The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a sustainable high-quality climate observation network that 50 years from now can with the highest degree of confidence answer the question: How has the climate of the nation changed over the past 50 years?" "Fifty years from now". Rather forty three in 2010, as the US Climate Reference Network (with some long term quality control) was started in 2003. Need say more? Surfacestations is checking USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network), which is an entirely different beast. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html NCDC guys are cross-checking neighboring station data, read (incomplete) station history files and do all kinds of statistical tricks, but no one goes there to have a look for the sake of good old reality check. -
chris at 09:41 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
re the TP Barnett et al paper in my post #19 above. The url corrupts when pasted here (perhaps John Cook can fix it!). You can find the downloadable pdf by Googling using the search term: Penetration of human-induced warming into the world's oceans. Barnett TP The link to the pdf will be high up on the list of results...Response: I've fixed the link in Comment #19. What I think happened was you copied and pasted the URL from the google search results. The problem is google abbreviate the URLs that they display in the search results (hence the /../ peppered through the URL). You need to click on the link then copy and paste the full URL from the browser's URL bar.
BTW, thanks for posting that paper. When I get around to the "heat from underwater volcanoes are causing global warming" argument, Barnett et al is a key part of the answer. -
chris at 09:18 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
re #12 From Peru The apparent dichotomy of the apparently quite sizeable geothermal heat flux (0.09 W/m^2) compared to the radiative forcing from CO2 (0.9 w/m^2) is resolved by noticing that the geothermal flux isn't a forcing. The geothermal flux is the background stationary level of heat flow from the interior, and since this has been proceeding for millenia and more into the deep past, the earth's ocean/surface temperatures will be near equilibrium with respect to the geothermal flux (unless it has changed massively in reecent times). So the forcing is near zero. It would be more appropriate to compare the geothermal flux (0.09 W/m^2) to the total solar flux averaged over the earth surface (1370/4 W/m^2). -
Riccardo at 09:05 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
a few minutes too late, and chris's answer is more detailed ;) -
Riccardo at 09:01 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
From Peru, on a geological time scale even land volcanoes may have a role, as probably happened in the deep past and on a much smaller scale in the last century. But it's irrelevant for recent global warming, what matters is what changes, not what is constant. One more point, as Gavin Schmidt said a while ago answering a question, underwater volcanoes would warm the deep ocean more than the surface, which is not happening. -
chris at 08:56 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Another way of addressing your question Paz, is to examine the vertical distribution of enhanced ocean heat in a warming world. The time variation of enhanced heat will be quite different if the heat penetrates the ocean from the atmosphere, compared to the notional situation of enhanced undersea volcanic activity (a notion which completely lacks evidence - one would have to postulate that undersea volcanic activity has all of a sudden increased by a truly vast amount). There's a fair amount of analysis of enhanced ocean heat distribution, and this is consistent with ocean warming as a result of heat penetration from the atmosphere. A "classic" paper is this one, downloadable from the link below (there's quite a bit of more recent studies too...): Barnett, T. P. et al. (2005) Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the World's Oceans Science 309, 284-287 -
Tom Dayton at 08:39 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Sorry, Paz, I don't remember. Look at the comment I cross-referenced earlier, and click on the links you find there; they might have what you're looking for. Otherwise I suggest looking at the U.S. Geological Survey web site. -
Tom Dayton at 08:36 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
From Peru, the forcing from solar minimum and solar maximum is zero. Because the min and max cancel each other out, over every 11 years. And geological timescales are irrelevant to the past 150 years in which human-induced warming has been most pronounced. -
Tom Dayton at 08:32 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
From Peru, I got the data from the sources I listed in the comments I cross-referenced in my previous comment. Where I wrote "For details, see ....". You should read first, type second. -
Paz at 08:29 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Thanks Tom, very interesting. Do you know of any charts that track recent the amount of underwater volcano eruptions over the recent decades? -
From Peru at 08:28 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Tom Dayton: Remember that the difference between Solar Maximum and Solar Minimum TSI is near 1 W/m^2 .Taking into account the Spherical Surface of the Earth, this gives us a forcing of 0,25 W/m^2. Now 0,09/0,25 = 0,36 ... 36% of Solar Variability! If your data is true, it can be an important Climate Forcing on geological timescales! -
yocta at 08:26 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
To add to Tom Dayton's comment..although this is to do with CO2 emissions rather than heat from undersea/submarine volcanoes the US Geological survey has a comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities. ...Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea... http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php -
From Peru at 08:20 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Geothermal Heat emission = 0.09 watts/m^2 ? This is 10% of our measured Radiative energy imbalance of 0.9 watts/m^2! Where do you get this data? 10% seems too much! -
Tom Dayton at 08:09 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Paz, the heat coming from undersea volcanoes along with the entire rest of the crust of the Earth (0.09 watts/m^2), is tiny compared to the forcing from CO2 (2.66 watts/m^2). For details, see my comments #234 and the following #235 in the Skeptic Argument Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans. -
From Peru at 07:48 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
This is a thing that continues to cause me a headache: The Early 20th Century(1900s-1940s) Warming of 0,4 ºC. It seems to me a lot strange that it peaked in the 1940s (then followed by a slight cooling of -0,1ºC until the 1970s) when both: a)Solar Activity peaked in the 1960s b)Big volcanos erupted(after near 50 years of calm) in the 1960s So, why Temperatures peaked in the 1940s and not in the 1960s? My suspect were Tropospheric, man-made AEROSOLS, but after seeing the GISS graph, TOTAL forcing still peaked in the 1950s at 0,5 W/m^2, still A DECADE(1950s) AFTER TEMPERATURES BEGAN TO COOL! What is going on? It could be: 1)Errors in temperature data or in the GISS total forcing estimation(this second is more likely as Aerosols Forcings are still considered "highly uncertain") 2)Climate Variability masking the (warming)forcing in the 1950s (for example, a series of weak El Niños and strong La Niñas) What do you think? -
Paz at 07:35 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Is there any data on underwater volcano eruptions? An argument that seems to be popping up more and more is that global warming is driven by underwater volcanoes that (1) warm the oceans, which (2) in turn warm the athmosphere. Is there any data about whether this can be ruled out? I think the appeal of this argument comes from a) that underwater are supposedly hard to track (so a large scale increase of eruptions could be going on without our knowledge) b) several recent papers arguing that part of the recent warming is driven by the oceans. It did some searching and could not find anything on this hypothesis, although I am sure it must be out there. -
yocta at 07:02 AM on 19 January 2010Why does CO2 lag temperature?
oops I meant CO2 in this case not lagging temperature :$ -
Andy Skuce at 06:42 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Klaus, you may find this article helpful: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ROG2000.pdf On page 192 there's the following statement: "While the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 was very explosive, it did not inject much sulfur into the stratosphere." There's also a table on the same page comparing historic eruptions and the various indices used to measure the intensity of the eruptions and their effect on climate. -
chris at 04:11 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Klaus, the site urled just below has a list of all of the major known volcanic eruptions of the Holocene (having Volcanic Explosive Index of 4 and higher). If you click on each volcano in the list it gives you detiled information about known properties. You might get some info there as to why St Helens isn't on the graph. It was a pretty major explosion, but perhaps it didn't have a large effect on very high altitude transmission of solar radiation..??? http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm?sortorder=desc 70n, a very quick way of assessing the Mauna Loa record is to compare it with the record of CO2 averaged over the sea surface sites. The data are continuously updated at the NOAA Mauna Loa site. The Mauna Loa record is very similar to the record of the sea surface average: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ -
Klaus Flemløse at 03:49 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
I am very facinated by the Mount St. Helens explotions in 1980. To me it was big.However is not at the graphics. Is it as mistake ? Do you have a listing of vulcanoes by size ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens -
70rn at 03:06 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Yeh? Well it's nice to have that off the list of arguments. All we have to do now is minutely scan every centimetre of the sea floor for volcanoes, (who are there in their millions apparently, pumping away in vast numbers with out changing the temperature profile or acidity of the ocean significantly, which is thoughtful) and you might even cause some ambivalence on this issue in a few heads. -
Ned at 02:51 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Thanks, 70rn. It's even simpler to point at all the other CO2 monitoring stations that have been set up elsewhere: http://gaw.kishou.go.jp/wdcgg/ Just as an example, I clicked on "Data / Quick Plot", then "Barrow" (Alaska), then "CO2 (continuous)", then chose Monthly data "File / Quick Plot", and plotted the result as a PNG. Lo and behold, a nice rising trend in CO2 from 1973 onward, with a strong seasonal cycle, too. I don't know of any volcanoes at Point Barrow, and I am unaware of any volcanoes that belch CO2 with such a nice, smooth, consistently rising trend over three decades! -
70rn at 02:01 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Here's a paper discussing the detection and removal of local co2 emissions from the Mauna Loa ('mount' obviously, but get better search results when you that term) record. Basically it states that localized co2 from the vents is at a completely different concentration and not mixed with the surrounding air and as such easy to distinguish from the background. It also notes that it is variable minute by minute - were as background data is steady over hours. -
70rn at 01:39 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
@ Ned Yeh the Mount Loa comment is pretty hard to shake off. A point to highlight to those that make this claim is the lack of a spike in the data last time it erupted (84) and the fact that the volcanoe has been overall less active than normal over the following quarter of a century, and as such if the readings were contaminated by the site then the data should have shown a corresponding decline. I don't doubt that the current data is calibrated against other sites in the NOAA network as well as secondary observations from sources like weather balloons. -
Ned at 00:22 AM on 19 January 2010Two attempts to blame global warming on volcanoes
Very well done, John. There are additional variants on this too, like the claim that submarine volcanoes in the Arctic Ocean are responsible for the decline in sea ice (you can see this from time to time on WUWT), or the claim that because the oldest CO2 measurement station is on the side of Mauna Loa, CO2 isn't actually increasing at all, it's just local contamination. Anyway, lacking your patience I usually see claims that "volcanoes are the real cause of AGW!" as evidence that the person making the claim doesn't have enough common sense to justify my participation in a serious discussion. But it's good to see that not everyone shares my impatience. This site is fantastic, and I've recently taken to directing people over here whenever I run across another version of the standard "un-skeptical skeptic" talking points. -
Ned at 23:23 PM on 18 January 20102009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
Trog writes: "[...] I tend to trust [UAH] more than GISS since it is satellite data and not subject to as much manipulation. UAH shows a declining trend more in line with the sun." There are at least four satellite-derived temperature analyses (from RSS, UAH, and two from UW). Their current temperature trends are as follows (in K/decade): RSS: +0.15 UAH: +0.13 UW-RSS: +0.15 UW-UAH: +0.11 All four of these show positive trends during a time when the sun has been cooling. (They're also not all that far from the GISS trend, which is +0.16 K/decade over the same period) In other words, the relatively small effect of the solar cycle on global climate is only partially reducing the impact of CO2 driven warming. And of course once the sun starts to warm again, it will be exacerbating the problem (slightly) rather than helping mask it as it does now (slightly). -
From Peru at 17:17 PM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Oopps. The graphs were not pasted. How can I post graphs, or any kind of figure? In the graphs, my numbers were: Total Forcing (1950s): 0,5 W/m^2 Solar Forcing (1950s): 0,2 W/m^2 Residual (1950s): 0,3 W/m^2 This is aerosol + Greenhouse gases + Land use change. The analysis forcing-by-forcing for tomorrow. Stay tuned.(please help with the graphics) -
From Peru at 17:07 PM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Well, this is my previous comment, in graphical mode: First the Various Forcings from NASA GISS, showed the solar forcing: Then the TOTAL FORCINGS: So 0,3 W/m^2 were NOT from the Sun. They were from Aerosol + GHG. (note:all numbers approximated from reading the graph) -
yocta at 16:39 PM on 18 January 2010Why does CO2 lag temperature?
RE# 39 thingadonta I don't think it's a preoccupation at all, it is the strongest link as to why there is a temperature anomaly over the last 50 years. And to keep making sure of this, more and more measurements and analysis are performed to verify it.(And lets not forget methane) It's fantastic that scientists can recreate past climates and find the causes as to why there was sudden shifts in atmosphere composition or biodiversity to major geological events, Earth's precession or even meteorites. Examples like the closing of the Isthmus of Panama are on the millions of years (geological) time scale. On the much much shorter climate age time scale, things like the general circulation or the pattern of the ocean conveyor belt are relatively stable compared to the geological events you have mentioned. In the context of climate ages, with CO2 being very strongly infrared active, , the sudden recent spike in CO2 ppm in the atmosphere, the sudden recent spike in globally averaged temperatures, empirical data showing CO2's effect on radiative forcing, (and temperature in this case not lagging CO2)it is impossible to overlook the villain. -
Doug Bostrom at 16:31 PM on 18 January 20102009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
"...we've just established that the sun has been cooling over the last 35 years while global temperatures have been rising." Well, the radiometer measurements must have been manipulated. Or the sun must have been manipulated. Whatever. Will The Team stop at nothing in their quest to establish a global Marxist wealth redistribution machine? -
From Peru at 16:03 PM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
John Cook: Thank you (and Hansen, obviously) for the graph! To you and to readers: What forcing do you think(personally) could explain better the Early 20th Century (1910s-1040s) Warming? a)The Sun b)Aerosols (Black Carbon + Sulfate) -
Trog at 14:46 PM on 18 January 20102009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century
As Algore said, "It's complicated". UAH has a very different ranking of hottest years, which I tend to trust more than GISS since it is satellite data and not subject to as much manipulation. UAH shows a declining trend more in line with the sun. In any event, sun activity matches temperature better than CO2 concentration. Now, if you can model sun, humidity, high and low clouds, ice and snow, ocean currents, CO2, wobble, solar flares and cosmic rays all operating in a chaotic relationship with unknown interactions and lags, you might be making some progress. I don't think we're there yet. I'll stick with observations and not trust models for now.Response: That the UAH satellite data is pristine, untouched data seems to be a common misconception. On the contrary, satellite data is subject to a great deal of manipulation. Orbit decay causes the altitude of the satellite to drop so that needs to be filtered out. The temperature of the actual satellite also changes and this affects the readings. Data from different satellites need to be spliced together. Cooling in the stratosphere needs to be filtered from the warming in the troposphere. And probably the most complicated adjustment is accounting for diurnal drift - the time of the day that the satellite passes over the equator slowly drifts over time (exacerbated by orbital decay). In fact, diurnal drift is the greatest source of discrepancy between the UAH data and RSS data.
And I must say, I find it extraordinary to hear you say "sun activity matches temperature better than CO2 concentration" when we've just established that the sun has been cooling over the last 35 years while global temperatures have been rising. -
Marcus at 13:45 PM on 18 January 2010Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
I'm guessing that acid rain had a *lot* to do with the sudden decline in tree-ring width post-1960. It certainly doesn't prove any kind of global cooling post 1950. It does, however, highlight the need to use more than a single proxy for determining climate in the absence of direct temperature measurements -
From Peru at 13:25 PM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
John Cook: In the comment to the previous post, I said: "The Early XX Century Warming(+0,5ºC) peaked at about the same time than WWII(around 1940), then a slight cooling of about -0,1ºC followed until about 10 years when temperatures stayed nearly constant between 1955 and 1975. The Sun Activity instead continued to incrase until mid-1950s, when it began a slow decline. Remarcable is that temperatures peaked BEFORE Solar Activity (a whole solar 11-year cycle indeed!). This seem inconsistent with the hypothesis that the Sun is the main responsible of the Early 20th Century warming." Then I talked about the Aerosol Forcing hypothesis(sulfates,black carbon...), and concluded with the question: "Has anyone compared the Sulfate vs. Black Carbon emissions making timeseries-graphs like the one presented here? (I referred to the TSI vs. GISS Temperatures in the previous post) That will do a good to determine which forcing (Solar or Aerosols) had the greatest impact." John Cook, I am still waiting for your response.Response: The estimated radiative forcing from sulfates and black carbon are available for download from the NASA GISS website. Please feel free to make a time series graph (and if you do, let us know what you find).
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Riccardo at 11:44 AM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
This exercise has not been solved for many decades. I don't think is going to be solved any time soon even by solar physicists, let alone we readers :) -
blouis79 at 08:53 AM on 18 January 2010Scientists can't even predict weather
The wave/tide analogy is a good one. Both are cyclic. Long term climate is also cyclic, not linear. The formula to convert radiative flux (RF) to surface temperature change is (ΔTs): ΔTs = λRF, where λ is the climate sensitivity parameter. This assumes ALL GHG forcing factors are equivalent despite that clouds produce negative feedback. Models that use a linear equation can only produce linear predictions based on recent trends. Even IPCC scientists say that GCMSs should be exercised on weather. http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/opinion/35820 The global energy budget (Kiehl/Trenberth) features high in the computations but the net positive radiative forcing is derived from Hansen's computer model. "GH theory (IPCC: Myhre et al.) tells us that the CO2 climate forcing from this increase equals 5.35 times the ln(ratio) = 0.035 W/m^2 Even if we escalate this by a factor of 3.2 to account for net positive feedbacks, as estimated by the IPCC model simulations, we arrive at 0.112 W/m^2 How do K+T arrive at 0.9 W/m^2 or eight times this value?" See http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/an-update-to-kiehl-and-trenberth-1997/#comment-1493 -
From Peru at 07:51 AM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Is there any connection between Solar Cycle LENGHT and Total Solar IRRADIANCE? If yes, what is the link between them?Response: When the sun is showing a long term warming trend, the solar cycle tends to get faster. Conversely, when the sun is cooling, the solar cycle slows. This is why the solar cycle 24 is taking so long to get started at the moment - because the sun is cooling at the moment. Why this is so, I leave as an exercise for the reader :-) -
Tom Dayton at 06:21 AM on 18 January 2010Temp record is unreliable
Gavin Schmidt has a brief response to the Smith & Coleman bizarre claims that the "real" temperature stations' data have been replaced by averages of unrepresentative stations' data, and that data have been destroyed. Gavin's response is to Leanan's comment #9 on 17 January 2010 in the comments on the RealClimate post 2009 Temperatures by Jim Hansen. -
Tom Dayton at 06:15 AM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
RealClimate has a new post titled 2009 temperatures by Jim Hansen, subtitled "If It's That Warm, How Come It's So Damned Cold?" -
Tom Dayton at 06:11 AM on 18 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
greenman3610 has a new video on the recent cold weather and its difference from climate.Response: I've added this to the skeptic argument "December 2009 saw record cold spells in Eurasia and USA". -
Riccardo at 22:56 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Berényi Péter, "Anyone, who cares for climate models should welcome an opportunity to verify them against independent data sources." This time i fully agree with you. I'm not the only one, many scientists around the world are still working on this issue; they try to improve new measurements and to correct and homogenize old data. You will easily find a lot of papers on the dry bias and possible recalibration of radiosonde data. No one will throw those data away for sure. I'm not going to call a reality check surfacestation.org for two main reasons. First, the very idea of that site is that scientists are not aware of the urban heat island effect and the site change/alteration issues. It's not true; indeed, as people behind surfacestation well knows, there are a lot of ongoing adjustments of the raw data (which, though, they don't like). Second, in a unusual consideration of non-scientific issues, the NOAA analysed the data of just the "good" stations and found almost no difference. The whole story turned out to be a strong and surely independent confirmation of the quality of their dataset and analysis. I'm just sorry for the hundreds of people sent around the US taking pictures following a false hope. -
Donald at 21:55 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
The models presumably include the solar forcing in W/m^2 from the TSI reconstruction- solar cycle length is just a proxy. Average TSI peaks in about 1960. Although there is yearly variation, there is not the same delayed correlation with the 1940's temperature peak, so the question of lag in the models doesn't seem to be relevant. http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm -
Qwerty at 21:48 PM on 17 January 2010It's cooling
Does this data only go back to 1950? -
RSVP at 20:53 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Actually, they do, but only for effects of CO2. -
RSVP at 20:52 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Donald Exactly. This article brought to mind the same question. That is, whether climate scientists include hysteresis in their models. -
Donald at 20:37 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
It's interesting to note a peak in the solar cycle graph (a solar cycle minimum length) about a decade before the peak in temperatures around 1940. Is there any connection? The 1940 temperature peak (which from reading this site I seem to remember is not well explained by known forcings or the models) is sometimes ascribed to an artefact of changes in the method of temperature measurement in the 40's. The minimum solar cycle length in the 30's doesn't show up in the TSI reconstruction as a peak. Is the slightly delayed correlation just coincidence? -
folke_kelm at 20:20 PM on 17 January 2010A visual deconstruction of a skeptic argument
There is much confusion about, why we are emitting more and more CO2 and yet always constantly 55% is absorbed. Then there is increasing CO2 in the air when temperature rises. But we see, ocean is absorbing despite increasing temperatures. How does this fit? If you have rather basic knowledge in physics and chemistry it is really easy to stitch these phenomenons together and understand, how the system works. let me explain. First, take, that the amount of carbon dioxide in the system Atmosphere+ocean+biosphere is constant. If that is so, the certain amounts of CO2 in the different subsystems is largely dependent on temperature. If it warms, more CO2 will move into atmosphere, if it cool, more into the ocean. This follows Henrys law. second, if you add CO2 into only one subsystem, the atmosphere, you disturb the equilibrium, with the result, that a constant amount of CO2 will leave the atmosphere and move into the other two subsystems, until equilibrium is reached again. Where the point of equilibrium is, is still dependend on temperature. So, if temps are rising, we will see a slightly decrease of the absorbed fraction of CO2. We are speaking here entirely of the biological carbon cycle. There is a geological too, which removes carbon out of all three subsystems, but here we talk about processes which take several 100 000 of years. I hope this makes it clear for some people how this works -
Marcus at 15:12 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
I do also love how those that are so quick to denigrate surface-based temperature measurements (because they don't say what they'd like them to say) are so quick to elevate radiosonde to almost exalted status-even though the same "issues" might apply. The difference is that, whilst ground-based & satellite based temperature readings are in close agreement, the radiosonde & satellite based measurements of humidity are *not* in agreement-at least as far as I can tell. Berényi Péter willingness to accept a single paper, based on what could be dubious data, says a great deal about his own political bias, IMHO. -
Berényi Péter at 14:13 PM on 17 January 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
guys, it is indeed possible that sixty years of radiosonde data are crap. Even the air can go into one corner of the room any time leaving me in vacuum. It is possible, even if unlikely. I could compute its probability. Considering the immediate usefulness of moisture data, it is also unlikely that radiosondes measured naught. It almost falls into the "if I had three legs it would not pass unnoticed" category. It is even more unlikely that the undetected systematic error has a consistent downward trend over such a long timespan. However, all is not lost. If in doubt one can go back, build a replica of each moisture sensor used (goldbeater's skin, rolled hair, carbon hygristor or capacitive sensors), go to the lab and test their relative humidity response, temperature dependent time lag and all the other relevant features. The old instruments can even be tested in situ for any unkonw source of bias like UV radiation, aerosols or whatever. It is a calibration job that does not even require a climate scientist. In fact there are better educated folks to do such a job. I understand that some of the recalibration is already done in the NCEP dataset (i.e. correction for decreasing response time), but the downward trend still remains. Believe me, the old folks were neither fools nor lazy bastards. If they used an instrument, it did measure what it was supposed to. They checked it and re-checked it. There might be some caveats, but it is all documented, meticulously. A serious re-evaluation of upper troposphere radiosonde humidity measurements should be the highest priority job right now, just as Paltridge et al suggest. This dataset does not depend on any atmospheric model, the corrections, if any, should come from entirely different souces. The same can not be said about satellite measurements of upper troposphere moisture. The incoming radiation is a complex function of vieving angle and pressure, temperature and relative humidity values along an entire (possibly oblique) column of air. The inverse transformation is impossible without some model of the supposed vertical and horizontal distribution of these parameters. Moreover, clouds make it next to impossible to do the calculations. At the same time most of the weather is about clouds (Is it sunny? rainy?). I do not think the downward trend can be calibrated away as apparently Paltrige does not believe it either. He just dares not make this statement directly. Otherwise he would be accused of a "clear and explicit political bias". I can tolerate it for I'm not running for grant money, his case might be different.
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