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sauerj at 11:11 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Picking up on ryland's 1st post: Is an "Overall Weighted Average Sea+Land Temperature" published anywhere (calculated based on the following)?:
OWASLT = Sum(Temp x Mass x Heat Capacity) / Sum(Mass x Heat Capacity), and looking at all pieces of mass components in the atmosphere + mass in the ocean (say down to 2000m or whatever depth would appropriate with respect to available global data & that should rightfully be included for an all inclusive weighted average temperature like this).
By combining everything into one OWASL temperature, this would then remove all the surface-only decadal swings caused by the shoshings back & forth between land & deep sea.
If total sea OHC is known (which is simply = temp x mass x Cp), then obviously sea temp is also known for all sea global locations and for all sea depths. Therefore, deriving the above OWASL temperature is 'doable'.
If sea OHC has continually & steadily been rising, and since this mass x Cp is 93% of the total mass x Cp of the globe, then obviously if a OWASLT was reported, then it would also be steadily climbing year after year on the same steady rate (even during the last 10 years when the rate-of-rise of surface-only temps was less than the 1990's). Having such a metric would remove all doubt that comes by only looking at the surface-only temp. And remove all contrarian ammunition, because there would be no hiatus in temperature rise using a metric like this.
Does anyone calculate & report an OWASL temp like this as their single, all inclusive metric number?
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scaddenp at 11:03 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Dont take this as gospel but I think it more complicated than that. An absolute OHC doesnt make a lot of sense. With respect to what? Absolute zero? freezing temp of water? What would you do with this number?
What I believe is actually calculated is change of temperature against the average of 1955-2006 temperature. The delta temperature plus heat capacity of seawater is then used to calculate OHC. This is a useful number.
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Ken in Oz at 10:28 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
The ups and downs, pauses and accelerations come from surface air temperatures being a consequence of sea surface temperatures, which are variable over decades due to ocean currents, overturning - ie things like ENSO, PDO. Warming overlays this variability.
But, presuming I read the article correctly, if we are waiting for the "hiatus" to end in a hockey stick, it will probably be after PDO shifts phase? I suggest - based on Foster and Rahmstorf's "Global Temperature Evolution" - that even a 'less likely due to PDO' el Nino or two will send us into record temperatures even without that shift. A positive PDO will just make the upturn more short term consistent and steeper.
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WxChief at 09:40 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
scaddenp - Is there an accepted value for the average 1955-2006 OHC?
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KR at 09:20 AM on 1 May 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Scaddenp - We do have XBT data below 700m, just rather less of it. Which is how the ocean heat content analyses going back to the 1950s have been done.
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scaddenp at 07:43 AM on 1 May 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - you are proposing to ignore OHC pre-Argo because there is only data to 700m. However, if you wish to postulate that the huge change in OHC 0-700m does not mean energy imbalance, then you must also be proposing that there could somehow cooling of the 700-2000 layer to compensate for warming in the upper layer.
I would also be interested in your opinion on the Loeb et al 2012 paper in claiming that models and observations are at odds.
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scaddenp at 07:32 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
WxChief - please note the OHC quoted is actually change is OHC since baseline (average of 1955-2006). There is very sparse data below 2000 but given mixing mechanisms available, it is not expected to be large. Furthermore it is constrained by steric sealevel rise (the Trenberth 2009 paper looked at this accounting exercise).
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scaddenp at 07:19 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Ryland, please accept my humble apologies for the "well duh". As a some time moderator on this site, my fault was doubly bad. It was an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction to what appeared to me as a straw-man argument.
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WxChief at 06:14 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
The ocean heat content graphic shows an increase over about 50 years of about 30x10^22 Joules for the top 2 km. What percent is this of the total? Is there an estimate for the total heat content of the ocean?
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Tom Dayton at 05:54 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland, I've responded to you on the It's Not Us thread.
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Tom Dayton at 05:52 AM on 1 May 2015It's not us
ryland (from another thread), you should read Michael Tobis's explanation of how the IPCC's explanation of attribution usually is mis-spun or even dis-spun by the media, and in particular by Curry.
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KR at 05:45 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
It can be challenging to avoid becoming short with new participants, especially if the points raised have been discussed at great length in previous discussions with others. There are numerous pseudo-skeptic arguments that are considered 'zombies' because they keep being raised despite repeated refutation, and quite frankly the question of attribution for climate change is one of those (see the It's not us thread, ranked as the 56th most common climate denial myth). After a while it becomes tiring to refute a poor assertion for the Nth time...
My personal approach is to point new participants to the relevant information as much as possible - and save sharper tones for those who continue to repeat incorrect assertions in the presence of evidence to the contrary.
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ryland at 05:20 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Phil@10 You may possibly be right. However if "well duh" is the accepted way on SkS of addressing posters who are not climate scientists and use imprecise sentences then so be it. Although that said, "well duh" may not be the best way to get the recipient of the post to immediately see the valdity and irrefutable logic of a particular argument. Moving on: KR as you suggested I am reading the views of both Gavin Schmidt and Judith Curry on attribution. Hard for me to digest in a single sitting but at the risk of another "well duh" a significant difference seems to be in Curry's use of 30 year periods and Schmidts dismissal of these as being too short to accurately evaluate the effects of natural factors. By the way I didn't see a single "well duh" from either Scmidt or Curry
Moderator Response:[TD] For discussions of attribution, the "It's Not Us" thread would be better than this one. Note there are three tabbed panes--Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.
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Phil at 04:22 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland: "This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures."
The idea that only human activity has an effect on global temperatures would mean that the production of CO2 on earth, could somehow eliminate the 11 year Solar cycle on the Sun, and ensure that volcanic activity on Earth suddenly became uniform. Such an implausible hypothesis is perhaps the reason that your comment received the Well duh! response.
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ryland at 03:15 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
KR@8 Thank for your courtesy and especiailly for your reply. Both are much appreciated. No, I wasn't referring to you as your post at 4 was both innocuous and informative. Additionally, from your responses at 4 and 8 I doubt very much if you would even consider making derogatory remarks
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MA Rodger at 01:40 AM on 1 May 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Given the preceding thread at the Guardian prior to the start here at SKS, was a thread discussion beginning here and running to 7,000 words of comment with nothing resolved, I would suggest a little discipline is required here at SKS to prevent it becoming another pantomime.
The issue to hand is "the missing 0.5W/m2 between models and reality." Such a quantity was identified @322 as having been "based on old figures from CMIP 4 and far less accurate observations, and even then is exaggerated by rounding."
This is refuted @330 as being "absolutely not true" because the missing 0.5W/m2 is apparently a different 0.5W/m2 to that identified @322, and for which we await a full description.
Looking back at the Guardian thread, the 0.5W/m2 appears here as the difference between study-based "heat gain in the measurable part of the ocean .. in the range of 0.3 to 0.6 W/m2" yielding a "best guess at ocean heat gain (of) 0.5W/m2" and "Models show(ing) the imbalance at the top of the atmosphere through this period as being 1.0 W/m2."
So what period? What models? Is the TOA 1.0 W/m2 anything to do with the "TOA energy imbalance projections from the models (of) ... currently about 1.0 to 1.2 W/m2" mentioned in the Guardian thread here?
Please let us not spend many thousands more words without a grip on what is being discussed.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:51 AM on 1 May 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper @328... Just to trying to simplify things here, so your key issue is that measured changes in OHC data (W/m^2) do not match model results for TOA imbalance.
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KR at 00:12 AM on 1 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland - If your 15:41 comment is directed to me (that isn't clear), and I have been overly brusque, my apologies. However, I have frequently run across the assertion that it's impossible to measure temperature anomalies, sea level rise, and the like to the acccuracies stated in peer-reviewed literature, and that assertion is incorrect.
The math behind the Law of Large Numbers goes back to Jacob Bernoulli in 1713, and is based on the statistics of measurements and random errors. A sufficient number of measurements describes a probability function around the correct value, and the more measurements you make the tighter the bounds of that probability, the higher the accuracy. That accuracy rapidly becomes smaller than the precision of any individual measurement. Given 'n' measurements and a measurement error with a standard deviation of 'S', the uncertainty scales with the number of measures by:
uncertainty = S / n0.5
Again, the simple case of dice is illustrative. If you roll a die five times, you might get the numbers 2, 5, 3, 6, 5, with a mean value of 4.2. But as you roll the die over and over, the measured mean value (assuming, of course that the die isn't loaded) will converge towards the real average of 3.5. After 10000 rolls the uncertainty in the estimate of the mean will 100 times smaller than the standard deviation of a single die roll, far below the single digit resolution of the die faces.
If the die is loaded, the measured mean value will be different, providing a reasonable test of whether or not the die is fair.
Of course, the measurements might be biased high or low, which would be a systematic error. But additive systematic errors (offsets) are wholly cancelled out by looking at changes, at the anomalies. Systematic errors in scaling (such as XBT issues with speed of descent for ocean heat content) can be identified by proper calibration and cross comparison with other measures such as ARGO - and once found they can be corrected to produce a consistent and accurate record.
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DSL at 23:43 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
StraightTalkin, see figures 1, 2, and 3 here:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr6204a1.htm#Fig2
The time series is explained extremely well by the spread of vaccination programs and outbreaks in unvaccinated populations. If you accept the vaccination mechanism for these diseases, you should at least find the mechanism highly plausible for other diseases.
Good sanitation and nutrition will help prevent disease, but they won't cause the precipitous declines described by those graphs. Kids were washing their hands in the 1950s and 60s. Nation-wide (US) improvements in nutrition do not coincide with the precipitous declines described by those graphs. -
Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - My apologies, S10 in Levitus et al is for the thermosteric component, while S1 shows the OHC (1022 J). Again, there is sufficient data to establish a long term trend against sampling uncertainties 0-2000m.
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Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - The XBT data does go to (and through) 2000 meters. Yes, XBT data back to the 1950's is sparse below 700 meters, but it is still data, and uncertainties due to sparse sampling are considerably smaller than the ocean heat content trends over the time of observations.
Again, I would refer you to Levitus et al 2012, in particular Fig. 1 and the supplemental figure S10, which shows the 0-2000m 2-sigma uncertainties, variances, and trends for each ocean basin. We have enough data to establish long term OHC trends with some accuracy.
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PhilippeChantreau at 23:18 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
StraightTalkin, that is a pile of nonsense. I'm not interested in books, where anyone can say anything they want. Peer-reviewed scientific evidence leaves no doubt as to the efficacy of vaccines. The recent outbreak of measles in various places in the US where gullible people believe books or blond bimbos instead of their pediatrician have shown all we need to know about the effectiveness of vaccines.
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Jim Eager at 23:09 PM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland: "This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures."
No one suggests that there aren't factors other than human activity that can affect global temperature. Except those setting up straw men to knock down, of course.
That said, other than an increase in solar intensity (the sole source of energy in) - which has not happened as it has in fact been the opposite recently, none of the internal variability factors that affect global temperature could have produced the monotonic warming over 35 years that we have observed. On the contrary, they all eventually revert to the mean.
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Jim Hunt at 22:56 PM on 30 April 2015There is no consensus
We seem to wandering rapidly off topic? Perhaps this is a more appropriate location to continue this conversation?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Has-Arctic-sea-ice-recovered.htm -
CBDunkerson at 22:07 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Straight Talkin, you are deluding yourself. Setting aside your fiction based dismissal of the effectiveness of the polio vaccine... smallpox? Diptheria? Rubella? Tetanus? Heck, measles?
If you really believe that vaccines haven't vastly reduced the number of infections from these and other diseases you just are not grounded in reality.
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Straight Talkin at 19:48 PM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Although I agree with the general tenor of the article I challenge anyone to read 'Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History' 2013 and still believe that vaccinations achieve any real benefits. Most things that they vaccinate for have very little risk in societies with good sanitation and nutrition. Everything that is vaccinated for was already well on the way to either being erradicated or had receded to a minor condition. Polio had become a very rare condition with a temporary upswing in the 50's, most probably due to DDT poisoning which has the same symtoms. After vaccinations for polio began many conditions that had similar symtoms were differentiated from polio whereas before they were often classified as polio. These conditions are not affected by polio vaccination. That is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the level of misinformation about how 'vaccines safed us from all of these dangerous deseases'. Some of them actually make it morelikely to get it more severely after a few years. I consider myself a very objective person and the science on human created climate change is overwhelming. The science behind vaccinations effectiveness and safety is not.
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Klapper at 17:40 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Tom Curtis #322:
"...That Klapper is still using it shows he is clinging to old data simply because it is convenient for his message..."
Absolutely not true (and an unecessary cheap shot to boot). I extracted the multi-run per model ensemble mean numbers from KNMI data explorer, CMIP5 rpc4.5 scenario. I also checked one individual run from the GISS EH2 model, same emissions scenario (although it makes no real difference between the scenarios in the 2005 to 2015 period).
I used the rlut, rsdt, and rsut variables (absolute values, not anomalies) to calculate my net. I'm looking into the difference between my Net TOA imbalance and Smith et al, but not tonight.
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Klapper at 17:29 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@KR #327:
The problem is the XBT data only go down to 700 m. If I had tried to use only 0-700 heat gain as my metric, I would be jumped on big time since I was "ignoring" the deeper ocean. The amount of sampling below 700 m prior to the ARGO network is extremely sparse, as noted in the Smith et al paper, particularly in the southern ocean.
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Klapper at 17:25 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Rob Honeycutt #326:
"...assuming they have to be somehow correct..."
Oh I don't assume they have to be correct at all. You can take the Net observations (satellite) from the Smith paper and throw them in the trashcan. However, that's not true of the ARGO data. Our knowledge of ocean heat is much much better since 2005 or 2004 than pre 2005 or 2004.
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ryland at 15:41 PM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Thank you for your "Well duh!" . I trust that if you are participating in the MOOC your responses to students will be somewhat less denigrating even if you regard questions asked/comments made as infantile. Having been a university professor for a very long time, I can assure you students regard responses such as "Well duh!" very unfavourably indeed.
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jja at 13:59 PM on 30 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
What does the Heartland Institute and Satan, Prince of Darkness have in common. . .
Moderator Response:[PS] Very close to the line here.
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Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper - It is wholly unreasonable to discard ocean heat content data prior to 2005. While the XBT data has higher uncertainties than ARGO, and there have been several calibration issues with it that are recently resolved, the sampling back to the 1960's is more than sufficient to establish long term growth in ocean heat content. There simply isn't enough deviation in temperature anomalies over distance to reject long term warming of about 0.6C/decade even with sparse XBT sampling.
For details on this, including evaluating the standard deviation of anomalies against distance, see the Levitus et al 2012, specifically the "Appendix: Error Estimates of Objectively Analyzed Oceanographic Data", which speaks directly to this matter. The uncertainty bounds from Levitus et al are shown in Fig. 2 here. And they are certainly tight enough to establish warming.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:53 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper... The Smith etal paper that Tom links to bears reviewing, especially the summary and conclusions. This sums up some of the things I've been attempting to state with regards to the relationship between observations and models, where I've said that it's reasonable to conclude that the models are better representing the climate system and our observations are challenge our ability to "close the Earth's energy budget."
What I see you doing (or at least believe I see you doing) is getting stuck in down in the weeds of our observations, assuming they have to be somehow correct. I think that's a misdirected approach. As I've said several times in our conversation so far, there are lots of uncertainties in the empirical evidence and the models are there to contrain those uncertainties.
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Klapper at 12:04 PM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Tom Curtis #322:
"...First, ...the TOA energy imbalance...from observations and models match closely except for the period of 1972-82"
Where would you get observations from 1972 for the TOA energy imbalance? For that matter exactly how accurate are the current observations for the TOA imbalance? There's an post over at the Guardian on the water vapour/climate change story by "MaxStavros" which claims the satellite numbers in raw form show an imbalance of 6.5W/m2 at the TOA. Since we know that is impossible the number has been adjusted down to something more believable. I can understand the instruments on the satellite are precise but not accurate, but that means the "observations" are not that reliable. I'm guessing the most reliable number is ocean heat, but that is true only since the ARGO era, from 2004 or 2005. From the NODC data, the warming rate of the oceans, corrected to global area, is about 0.5 W/m2. This is close to other estimates. The following example is ocean plus melting, plus land, but since most of the heat goes into the oceans we would expect the ocean only and total should be close (and they are).
Here's a quote from Jame Hansen et al 2012 at the NASA website: "We used other measurements to estimate the energy going into the deeper ocean, into the continents, and into melting of ice worldwide in the period 2005-2010. We found a total Earth energy imbalance of +0.58±0.15 W/m2 divided as shown in Fig. 1"
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/
Here's the problem with an energy imbalance of +0.58W/m2: the models show a much larger TOA energy imbalance. The GISS model shows +1.2W/m2, and the CMIP5 ensemble mean is +1.0 W/m2 for the 2000 to 2015 period.
Moderator Response:[JH] Link activated.
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Klapper at 11:38 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
@Rob Honeycutt #321:
"... who are the experts you're asking?..."
You, and Tom Curtis and if not direct me to the peer-reviewed research that you know of. I admit I have in the past used Skeptical Science as a sounding board for ideas I have, since after a few back and forths on the numbers I can normally see if there is a concrete reason to reject the reason or not.
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Tom Dayton at 11:24 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Perhaps Tom Curtis might use this recent study to add to the "It's the Sun" post, a counter to the myth that the Earth's temperature still is catching up to the increased input from the Sun that happened before around 1960? The counter to the myth is that if the myth is true, energy imbalance should be decreasing since then, as the increased outgoing radiation due to the Earth's higher temperature increasing compensated for the now-stable input from the Sun. Pretty please?
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mercpl at 10:51 AM on 30 April 2015A revealing interview with top contrarian climate scientists
As a keen gardener I feel qualified to comment on the "CO2 makes thing grow" argument. Well of course it does, but then so does water, sunshine and fertilizer. The problem is, of course, getting all of those things in the right balance. If I put either too much or too little water on my vegetables, they will die. Too much fertilizer will burn the leaves of many plants. And too much sunshine will kill many shade loving plants.
The same goes for CO2, having more available isn't automatically better. The question is "Can they use it?". It's such a stupid and simplistic argument.
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John Hartz at 10:32 AM on 30 April 2015There's no empirical evidence
Recommended supplemental reading:
Is 2015 The Year Soil Becomes Climate Change’s Hottest Topic? by Natasha Geiling, Climate Progress, Apr 29, 2015
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Tom Curtis at 09:22 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Rob Honeycutt @321, there has been a recent paper by Smith et al (Feb, 2015) on "Earth's energy imbalance since 1960 in observations and CMIP5 models". For your discussion with Klapper, the key graphs are figs 3 a and b.
"Earth's energy imbalance. (a) Time series of 5 year running mean N and Ht (as Figure 2, second panel) for 21 CMIP5 coupled model simulations (N in green, Ht in orange, ensemble mean in thick lines) compared with Ht from MOSORA (red) and No (blue, see text). Black squares (diamonds) show where differences between MOSORA and No (CMIP5) are significant with 90% confidence. (b) N averaged over different periods in No (blue, with 1 sigma uncertainties) compared to the CMIP5 models (green, box showing the mean ±1 sigma and whiskers showing the range) and estimates from the IPCC fifth assessment (red) [Rhein et al., 2013, Box 3.1]. Numerical values are given in Table S3."
To interpret that, No is the net downward energy flux at the Top of the Atmosphere (ie, TOA energy imbalance) determined from observations, being the net difference between satellite observed outgoing long wave radiation and incomeing short wave radiation benchmarked against ocean heat content data from July 2005 to June 2010. Ht MOSORA is the ocean heat content from a Met Office reanalysis. That makes it semi-emperical, being emperical over those zones of the ocean of which we have observations, but using a computer model constrained to the emperical values over those zones where we have observations to fill in those zones in which we do not have observations. Ho and Ht CMIP5 are the multimodel mean equivalents.
Several things are worth noting in Fig 3a. First, No (ie the TOA energy imbalance) from observations and models match closely except for the period of 1972-82. They certainly match well over the last decade, although the observed No is slightly less than the modelled No in that period (of which more later). Second, TOA energy imbalance and OHC should match closely, and do for the models. There are, however, wide disparities between them in observations. That indicates there are more problems with the observations than there are with the model/observation comparison. (For what it is worth, the problems with observations probably relate to the limited region of the ocean in which OHC is directly observed, coupled with problems in the reanalysis.)
Fig 3b is much simpler, and simply shows a direct mean TOA energy imbalance comparison between models and observations over various periods. As you can see, the observations are statistically indistinguishable from the models for all periods. More importantly, "the missing 0.5W/m2 between models and reality" is seen to be a fiction. The actual difference over the most recent decade is 0.11 W/m^2. The 0.5 figure is based on old figures from CMIP 4 and far less accurate observations, and even then is exagerated by rounding. That Klapper is still using it shows he is clinging to old data simply because it is convenient for his message.
The paper also has some interesting information about the cause of the discrepancy between models and observations, encapsulated in Fig 4:
As you can see, the discrepancy between model and observed short wave radiation (ASR) is greater and more persistent than the discrepancy in longwave radiation (OLR) after 2000. Ergo the primary cause of the 0.11 W/m^2 discrepancy between models and observations is the reduced observed shortwave radiation compared to the models. At least part of the explanation of that is that the models cease to use historical data from about 2000 onwards, and hence do not include the short wave forcing from a series of recent volcanoes. If that forcing were included, the discrepancy between models and observations would be smaller, possibly non-existent.
(Note to Rob - I've spelt out in detail a number of points I know you know quite well for the benefit of Klapper and other potential readers.)
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mancan18 at 08:22 AM on 30 April 2015Inoculating against science denial
Very informative.
William and the trust of this article make a very good point. Knowledge does not come from being buried in massive amounts of information. However, if this knowledge accumulates over many years of serious disciplined study, it will ultimately lead to expertise and the ability to make coherent arguments within said discipline. However, knowledge also comes from being asked the right questions, engaging the mind and then exploring the logical consequences of the answers. At the end of the WW2, psycologists working for the Allies were engaged to de-program the Nazi ideology of the extremists in the Hitler Youth, who had been brought up in an environment where anti-Semitism, eugenics and militarism were the norm. That de-programming involved asking the right questions, allowing those whose views had been distorted, to engage their minds and explore the logical consequences of their firmly entrenched beliefs. Their de-programming did not come from being told that they were wrong and burying them in massive amounts of information. In fact, the non-threatening questioning techniques used, allowed the psycologists to de-program most of the young Nazi extremists in about a week.
On an alternative point, made elsewhere in the article and discussion, is that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, as has been already pointed out. But it can imply a reliability and consistency. However, it does not imply the validity of the relationship being correlated. Also, if there is no correlation then there can never be validity. In other words, validity implies correlation but correlation does not necessarily imply validity. That has to be done through logical argument using relevant knowledge and understanding.
As for CC deniers versus CC acceptors. It is unlikely that there will ever be 100% consensus on either side. It is an argument that has to be won in the probabilities. Deniers seem to want 100% certainty, but considering the chaotic phenomonen being studied that is very unlikely. On the other side, acceptors seem to want 100% acceptence and 0% denial. This again is unlikely considering human nature. The best you can hope for is, as John points out in this article, an inocculation point, a critical mass of acceptors, which leads to wide spread acceptence in the public consiousness which should then lead to support for positive political action. Only then, will denial be seen by the public as merely a fringe idea, to be banished into the realms of other questionable and unsubstantiated scientific theories. How you do that effectively in the time frame needed is, of course, the million dollar question.
I do believe that the acceptor side of the CC debate will eventually become widely accepted in the public mind. The basic science is well understood by scientists and will eventually penetrate through to the public. However, will it be in time to take the positive action needed to alleviate the worst aspects of AGW? One can only hope.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:01 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Klapper: "....or where is the missing 0.5W/m2 between models and reality?"
Rob: "Really? Who've you asked about this one?"Klapper: "You for a start. However, while you've dismissed this as irrelevant, you're not very knowledgeable about greenhouse physics (your repetitive references to the irrelevent heat seeking missile examples says a lot), and I think this is time to take this argument over to Skeptical Science where there are more knowledgeable posters to discuss/argue the point."
Just to pick up the conversation with Klapper.
I don't know why you're asking me questions like this that are best answered by people who are experts in the field. All I can do is try to read the relevant research and give my non-professional opinion.
What I'm asking you is, on all these questions you're asking, which you seem to think are evidence of a failed theory of AGW, who are the experts you're asking? You say they're not answering these questions, but are you actually asking anyone who actually would best know the answer?
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:52 AM on 30 April 2015Climate sensitivity is low
Stub for Klapper to move conversation from Guardian to SkS where he believes there are more informed commenters than me.
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scaddenp at 07:50 AM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
"This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures".
Well duh! Someone suggesting that there arent other factors? However, England is talking about the yearly to decadal variations in surface temperature which are strongly dominated by internal variability due to an unevenly heated, water-covered planet. Climate is by definitition about the 30-year averages. The currently observed change in climate (ie the long term trend) since 19th C however is mostly if not all due to human activity.
Surface temperature is important because that is what we experience but it is also prone to high levels of variability. As the article points out, you can look at other metrics instead - OHC, sealevel, global glacial mass which have a much lower degree of internal variability.
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The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland - In response to your second, and quite unrelated question, ""...can ocean temperatures be accurately measured to fractions of a degree or to 100 or so zeta joules?, the answer is simply Yes, we can.
This opinion that we cannot measure to the stated level of accuracy is a common misconception - from the Law of Large Numbers we find that as the number of observations increases the accuracy of the observations as a whole converges towards the real answer, regardless of the resolution of the individual measurements. Roll a sufficiently large number of dice, and the average fo the die values will converge towards 3.5, with precision increasing along with the number of dice rolled.
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The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
ryland - Attribution studies, looking at how much of recent climate change is due to us and how much is due to natural variations, is a very significant aspect of climate study. And multiple studies using different methods have come to the conclusions (see figure 2) that we are responsible for more than 100% of recent warming (with a small cooling influence from natural forcings).
See also an excellent overview of the current understanding of attribution at Realclimate, summarizing the information from IPCC AR5 - the best guess is that anthropogenic forcings are responsible for 110% of warming in the last half century, with only a 5% chance of the attribution being less than 50%. In other words, a 95% chance, given the evidence, that we are the dominant cause of recent warming.
To the extent we wish to minimize climate change, we have to address our responsibility for it.
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SkepticalinCanada at 05:13 AM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Sea "temperature" is not given in joules, ocean heat content is.
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ryland at 04:24 AM on 30 April 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
Professor England says
"As a result, surface temperature is strongly affected by natural variability. Beyond year-to-year variability such as El Niño there are decade-to-decade changes, such as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, which has been shown to have a marked impact on global temperature rise.
In particular the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation can lead to dramatically increased trade winds and fewer El Niños – as has been occurring since 2001. The modulation of these processes can significantly impact global average temperatures".
This suggests that factors other than human activity have an effect on global temperatures. But what percentage of global atmospheric temperature/ocean temperature change is due to natural factors and what to human activity? Without knowing this how can the extent of the appropriate action be taken to limit huan impact be determined with any degree of accuracy? And why is the sea temperature given in joules rather than in degrees C or conversely why is surface temperature given in degrees C rather than joules? And can ocean temperatures be accurately measured to fractions of a degree or to 100 or so zeta joules?
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Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
"Policy group", i.e. lobbyists.
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Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Tom Curtis - Thank you, I had not been aware of that code release.
Although from Connelley's report it seems to be rather horrifying (gah!) from a software perspective, with code changes and recompilation needed every month due to fixed arrays that have to be resized for each additional data point, huge chunks of code commented out or unreachable due to gotos and program logic, etc.
I suspect the most useful part of that information will be the algorithm description, which should permit cross-checking by other investigators, for example Po-Chedley and Fu (relevant 2012 article on UAH reconstructions here). I hope they'll put out an update that includes the V6 changes - the linked documentation refers to multi-view angle data, which has been abandoned in favor of multi-channel data for the computation of lower troposphere temperatures.
I'm not entirely certain how comparable the 5.6 and 6.0 UAH versions are as a result of those method changes.
I'm also curious to see if the new version of UAH temperatures has a significant effect on the Cowtan and Way temperature reconstruction - the changes in the UAH V6 Arctic temperature trend (by a factor of almost 2) is quite significant.
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Dennis at 01:56 AM on 30 April 2015Heartland takes climate foolishness to a Biblical level
As stated on their website, Heartland is a libertarian/free market economic policy group. Their ventures into religion as are far off-topic from their stated purpose as their ventures into scientific research.
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