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MA Rodger at 00:30 AM on 20 March 2014Does the global warming 'pause' mean what you think it means?
BruceWilliams @25.
Your 0.56% derivation is suffering some profound problems. Firstly you should divide by 4 (not 2) to obtain the area of a projected disc from the area of a sphere. But most important, solar radiation is ~1,366 W/sq metre. That is reduced to ~70% of that value due to albedo. To convert to W/sq mile (which you appear to be using) you would multiply by 2,589,988. And a joule is a watt.second not a watt/second. (Luckily you are only dividing by 1.) Thus I make the solar energy hitting the planet 4.8766e17 W so you are within the ballpark so far, but purely by luck rather than anything else.
Your TNT energy is marginally high & your energy per bomb marginally low. How you manage to then obtain 1,000 bombs per second I cannot imagine. It should be something like 7,000 bombs. I assume the 71% is the areal proportion of the oceans, thus some 5,000 bombsworth of solar radiation strikes ocean. If 4 bombsworth is absorbed, that would be 4/5,000 = 0.08%, or seven times less than the figure you derive. Hey, that means the last two lines of your derivation was okay. Well done!! (I should confess that my arithmetic is subject to occasional error. It is, however, not subject to systemic error.)
But then, I have a feeling you are not bothered by the actual figure. Rather you want to bash on about the recent global average SST.
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CBDunkerson at 21:26 PM on 19 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #12A
localis, actually the deniers have a whole collection of nonsense for denying the Keeling curve;
- Mauna Loa volcano biases the results
- The results are faked
- It doesn't matter because CO2 doesn't cause warming
- The CO2 is coming out of the oceans/volcanos/my posterior
- Doesn't matter because cloud fairies will cause a large negative feedback
- Et cetera
Granted, none of these make a bit of sense... but deniers don't need their arguments to make sense. They'll take any pretext for ignoring reality.
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localis at 19:05 PM on 19 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #12A
The Keeling Curve is the one solid piece of evidence that anyone can monitor daily which indisputably shows C02 levels rising. It therefore seems a great omission by those arguing for the reality of climate change that this essential information seldom enters the conversation. Even the most outspoken denier has difficulty disputing the reality (and the implications) of what it reveals.
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Pete Wirfs at 14:17 PM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6
@#5 villabolo
No worries.
If you think someone might have the desire to retrieve files from your PC, the best security is to turn it off or disconnect it from the internet when it is not being used. Also you need to provide good physical security so no one picks it up and walks off with it.
Sometimes servers are easier to break into than PCs simply because they are providing data to the public 24 hours a day 7 days a week; this allows a hacker far more opportunity.
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BruceWilliams at 13:52 PM on 19 March 2014Does the global warming 'pause' mean what you think it means?
Is this to say that the oceans are retaining about 0.56% of the energy shining onto them from the sun?
And if so, why isn't the warmer ocean causing the surface temperature to rise? I assume by global surface temperature in your above graph you are measuring both the land and ocean surface temperature, correct?
0.56% Derivation
Earth Surface area = 196.9e6 mi^2
1/2 that = 9.845e7 mi^2
Earth recieves about 3.538 W/mi^2 avg
Total = 3.483e17W/s (Joules)
Little Boy about 16 Kton of TNT
1 Ton TNT about 4.25e9 J
Little Boy = 6.8e13 J
Earth recieving 1000 Little Boys/sec
Oceans = 71% so getting 710 Little Boys per second
4 of those retained = 0.56%
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BruceWilliams at 13:08 PM on 19 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
I have only been able to find 1 graph showing ocean surface temperature and it showed that from about 2005 to present the ocean surface temperature has dropped slightly. This does not jive with increased ocean surface energy. Does anyone know of any additional information available?
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Tom Curtis at 11:42 AM on 19 March 2014Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
Michael Sweet @21, Eschenbach also showed a map of the locations in which SST excedes 30 C (Fig 5, AOTM):
The contrast between the West and East Pacific makes it very clear that ocean currents and prevailing winds are a major factor in determining the upper reach of SST. The mixing of cold waters with surface waters of Peru makes temperatures greater than 30 C effectively impossible under current conditions, for example.
Further, and as you can see, in general 30 C SST occurs at higher latitudes in the NH than in the SH, and is more likely to occur in enclosed waters (Sea of Japan, Mozambique Channel) than in open waters. The two phenomena are related, of course. There are more enclosed waters in the NH than in the SH.
The importance of enclosed waters is not that they are shallow. (The Persian Gulf is shallow, but the other enclosed waters with high SST are not.) Rather, it is that they limit mixing with nearby cold water. That is made particularly clear in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, which are both wide enough to present no significant restriction on mixing. Despite that they also experience very warm temperatures because the only significant body of water they can mix with are equatorial waters to the south, which are warm year round rather than just seasonally.
As noted, the impact of limited mixing explains why there are higher SST in the NH than occur in the SH, despite the fact that the SH recieves more insolation. So, as you would expect, insolation does not explain everything.
Finally, the peak daily TOA insolation is found outside the tropics, as can be seen from the wikipedia chart above. That does not result in peak SST outside the tropics (ignoring the Persian Gulf). That may be in part because outside the sub-tropics, the surface has a net energy deficit:
As a result, prolonged sunlight may not lift temperatures above levels in which they are close to energy balance. Further, at higher latitude, the rate of warming will be slower, so that temperatures will not rise to very high levels until many hours after noon, by which time insolation is falling again. These two factors complicate the issue, so that I would not like to predict the latitude of maximum SST even in a pure waterworld with no lateral mixing. It will not be confined to the equator, however, and probably shifts seasonally across the equator.
So, the situation is not a simple as my exposition above may suggest. Never-the-less, it is ironic that Eschenbach picked as his two primary pieces of evidence facts that are explicable in terms of insolation alone (ie, the shapes and relative positioning of the gaussians and the relative peakiness of summer vs winter periods.
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wili at 11:16 AM on 19 March 2014East African countries are dealing with the impacts of climate change
It looks like crop losses will be greatest soonest in the tropics, at least for corn and wheat: http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2014/03/climate-change-will-reduce-crop-yields.html
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michael sweet at 08:50 AM on 19 March 2014Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
Tom,
I was amazed to see your data on sea temperatures showing the hottest temperatures outside the equatorial region. Your chart of solar insolation was a remarkable explaination of the data. I will have to look at the ocean temperature charts a lot more carefully to find the hot spots away from the equator.
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villabolo at 08:40 AM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6
Forgive me for asking a foolish question but is there any danger, from all this, to our PCs?
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pmj_rit at 07:30 AM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 3
The above is very good practice. For the sake of your own your users' peace of mind please implement it.
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John Hartz at 06:29 AM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6
will:
Check out: CO2 on Path to Cross 400 ppm Threshold for a Month by Brian Kahn, Climate Central, Mar 18, 2014
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wili at 05:26 AM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6
I still don't get anything.
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Lionel A at 05:00 AM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6
I got 505 errors from Climate Progress from earlier on today here in the UK, it is now back but content that was posted recently, one on the Paris smog and another on fracking related quakes in Ohio state, has gone AWOL it does seem like they are having problems.
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wili at 04:36 AM on 19 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6
This is a great thread, but it does make me feel a bit paranoid everytime one of my favorite climate sites is down, as Climate Progress seems to be right now for me. Is anyone else having this problem.
OT (but is anything climate related really off topic?): The current official daily numbers at Mauna Loa now work out to the first 7-day period of above 400 ppm this year, by my calculations (but please do recheck my maths, someone).
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:53 AM on 19 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
RussR wrote: "Very well, you've made your case. I accept that I was incorrect and in light of the data, will revise my argument from "never" to "less than 0.1% of the time"."
This is the sort of facile smart-alec response that I would expect from someone who is merely trolling, and so your credibility here slips another notch. If you were genuinely interested in the science you would have made a serious attempt to revise your scientific position, rather than just add a post-hoc loophole in an attempt to limp on for a while longer. Nobody is fooled by this, I am always amazed by Tom's patience, and the difference between his attitude and your speaks volumes, pity you seem unable to follow his example.
Moderator Response:[JH] Russ R is on a very short leash with respect to compliance with the SkS Comments Policy. He has been warned multiple times about the need to comply. Any future posts he makes on the 'thermostat' hypothesis will be summarily deleted for violating the "excessive repetition" prohibition. Russ may respond to the new materials posted in response to his last post, provided his response is substantial, and not (yet again) merely dismissing contrary data because it is inconvenient.
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Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
Tom Curtis - The 'thermostat' hypothesis has been seriously proposed in the literature, as per Lindzen's Iris papers; and as noted in this discussion it has been shown to be false. It just doesn't hold up under examination, under the data.
But as with the ongoing Lindzen papers (repeating the same claims while ignoring published rebuttals) and with hobbyists like Eschenbach at WUWT, it appears to be (IMO) attractive as some kind of magical counteraction to AGW, something that absolves us of any responsibility to change. And as such I expect that this mythical thermostat will continue to be invoked by those in denial, or who are relatively uninformed about the science.
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Tom Curtis at 00:11 AM on 19 March 2014Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
KR, the ridiculousness of the "hard limit" theory as an argument against climate change is multiple. It is not supported by the basic data. It has no physical basis. It contradicts the fact that higher SST determined in the past by proxies as you note, including some as high as 40 C. It is accepted, therefore, not on any scientific basis, but out of desperation to believe that global warming cannot be harmfull. The problem is, it fails even that purpose.
Taking Palau as an example, the average SST in the warmest month in Palau is 29.2 C. The rise in SST expected at Palau in the warm scenario is 2.5 C. Consequently, with current predictions of global warming, in a BAU scenario we expect ocean temperatures in the Pacific Warm Pool to rise to 31.7 C, ie, below the "wall". That is, still below any reasonable estimate of the "wall". So even if this absurd hypothesis were true, it might possibly limit warming a little next century, but this century it is irrelevant anyway.
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Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
I would note that tropical sea surface temperatures are considered to have been rather higher during the Eemian, which is in and of itself sufficient data to disprove a 'thermostat' hypothesis.
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Jim Hunt at 22:44 PM on 18 March 2014The Extraordinary UK Winter of 2013-14: a Timeline of Watery Chaos
My latest musings on this topic, including the latest from both the Met Office and the NOAA, and some pictures of the after effects here in Soggy SW England:
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DSL at 13:28 PM on 18 March 2014Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
When does the magical cooling mechanism kick in? Does it automatically occur regardless of what Hadley and Walker circulation are doing to cloudiness? I note that in, for example, Palau, rainfall shows a pretty flat trend despite temp rising (Figs. 10.3 & 10.4).
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michael sweet at 12:34 PM on 18 March 2014Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
Russ,
There are now approximately 13 posts relating to the land temperatures at Kritimati island. You brought up this subject as your primary argument to support your wild claim that there is a "wall" to surface sea temperatures. You have provided no reason why the land temperature at Kritimati Island would relate to the sea temperature in the Pacific Warm Pool 3,000 miles away, or even why any current land temperature would relate to a future maximum sea temperature even if it was nearby. The thermal mass of the ocean controls the land temperatures of very small, low islands like Kritimati and Tarawa except for rare occasions like the calms Tom described. You have provided no additional data or citations to support your wild claim. The moderator has to ask what your point is. Tom has provided copious data showing current sea temperatures are frequently over 31C and as high as 35C. What is the point of your argument about Kritimati Island land temperatures? How does it relate to your wild claim of a "wall" in sea temperatures?
Perhaps I should have said that you were in violation of the policy against excessive repetition instead of sloganeering, I see the moderator has warned you again. Please address the points of fact that you have previously ignored instead of making useless rhetorical points.
Why do you bother posting here when you apparently have no interest in the data or peer reviewed reports?
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Tom Curtis at 12:26 PM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @89:
1) Your hypothesis is that high temperatures will automatically result in high humidity. A failure of that connection is further refutation of that hypothesis, not justification for ignoring the data.
2) The data you presented does not show a "remarkably consistent upper boundary". It shows a distribution, with daily maximum temperatures ranging between 18 C and 27 C. The mean is close to 29 C, with a standard deviation around 1- 2 C. To show "a remarkably consistent upper boundary" you need to show the actual statistical distribution, and show that it has a sharp cut off. You have not even made an attempt at that. Nor have you defined the supposed "upper boundary" to even know whether it lies at 1 or 2 standard deviations from the mean. Rather, you have hedged your claim to make it unfalsifiable. When it was found that you had not hedged it enough, you provided ad hoc reasons to ignore contrary data. And now, you use an arbitrary binning method to ignore the fact that the data do not show a consistent upper limit at all. The only trope of pseudo-science your missing is the conspiracy theory.
3) You introduced Tarawa, not me. If you objected to the data, you should have mentioned that before detailed analysis showed it did not support your opinion. It is very revealing, however, that you consider the data source suitable when it supports your views, but unsuitable when it does not.
4) The Red Sea also shows temperatures comfortably above you supposed upper limit. It is over 100 km wide at nearly all points, and has an average depth of 490 meters. Therefore if the supposed mechanism of your upper limit worked, it would work in the Red Sea. But yet again, we will find, any data that falsifies your views will be excluded by you as irrelevant on specious grounds.
Russ R @93:
"Dikran Marsupial @91,
"Now if you were genuinely interested in scientific discussion, you would admit that your assertion was incorrect, and possibly revise it."
Very well, you've made your case. I accept that I was incorrect..."
Yet still no apology for the false accusation of cherry picking.
Well, who cares anymore. Russ has so trashed his intellectual reputation that I see no point in further discussion with him regardless of any apology or lack of it. As the good book says, "Do not cast your pearls before swine."
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Tom Curtis at 11:58 AM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
I have posted a comment on the thread suggested by KR. I have looked at Eschenbach's data, for at least he provided some (unlike Russ). I show from that data that it contradicts, rather than supports, Eschenbach's hypothesis, both because it shows a more poorly defined upper limit on temperatures in warm months than in cooler months; and because large scale statistical features of the data that Eschenbach attributes attempt to explain in light of his hypothesis, which therefore would be evidence for his hypothesis, are in fact a consequence of the actual pattern of insolation found in the tropics (which is not what is often naively supposed to be the case). As those patterns have a sufficient explanation in facts that are both well established by theory and observation, they are not evidence of some hypothetical alternative explanation.
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Tom Curtis at 11:52 AM on 18 March 2014Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
Following on from a discussion elsewhere, I would like to discuss Willis Eschenbach's hypothesis, in that he at least presents what at first glance looks like evidence for his hypothesis. The evidence is scattered through three posts at WUWT, and shows that SST above 30 C are uncommon. Eschenbach argues that because those temperatures are uncommon, there is a "hard limit" on ocean temperatures, slightly above 30 C.
Eschenbach's hypothesis faces an immediate hurdle in that his own data refutes it. Here is his plot of "all" NH Argo surface temperatures (Fig 2, AOTM):
The "all" is dubious in that there are far to few data points for "all" ARGO NH surface temperature records, and it is likely that Eschenbach has used a random sample of the data to make distributions clearer. Regardless of that point, however, it is very clear from the graph that there is not a hard limit at 30-32 C. Several temperatures are recorded above those values, and some very far above those values. This is most clear in 2012 which shows a cluster of data points above 35 C. Further, the period of peak temperature does not show a well defined limit. Indeed, the upper limit on temperatures is less well defined in the warm months than in the cool months, the opposite of what we would expect if there were indeed a "hard limit".
What we would expect with a genuine "hard limit" can be seen by comparing the NH warm temperatures with the lower range of the SH cool temperatures (Fig 2, Notes 2):
You can clearly see a hard limit in low temperatures slightly below 0 C, representing the freezing point of sea water. The key feature is that the lower limit of temperatures is far more sharp ly defined in the cool months than in the warm months. That is in strong contrast to the upper temperature limit, which is more sharply defined in cool months than in warm months, a feature which by itself refutes Eschenbach's hypothesis.
At this point I will make a short logical excursion. As everyone knows, there is a "hard limit" on liquid water temperatures at 0 C, ie, the freezing point. Despite that, the hard limit in sea water is obviously less than 0 C. The reason is that increased salinity reduces the freezing point. Therefore, the "hard limit" is only a hard limit under a certain set of condition. If you change those conditions, you also change the "hard limit". It follows that even had Eschenbach been able to demonstrate a hard limit, he would not have demonstrated that Sea Surface Temperatures would not rise above that limit in the future, under different conditions. Of course, that is a point purely of logical interest in that Eschenbach has not demonstrated a "hard limit" to begin with.
Returning to Eschenbach's evidence, he presents more evidence that he supposes supports a hard limit. Specifically, he shows that the closer to the equator, the smaller the annual variation in temperatures (Fig 3, AOTM):
He says of this graph,
"As you can see, the warm parts of the yearly cycle have their high points cropped off flat, with the amount cropped increasing with increasing average temperatures."
That, however, is not what you see at all. Rather, at the warmest times of the year, the upper limit of temperatures are least well defined. If anything, at that time you have a spike in temperatures.
I suspect the misdescription is because Eschenbach reffers to the guassians rather than the data. He expects the Gaussians to show a series of sine waves, with those closer to the equator being warmer than those further away. He thus interprets the actual series of successively smaller amplitude sine waves with the upper cycle nearly coinciding in values as the top of the cycles having been truncated.
Unfortunately for his hypothesis, there is a well known phenomenon in nature that shows a similar pattern to his Gausians, ie, the daily TOA insolation relative to latitude:
(Source)
You will notice the near constancy of insolation at the equator, and also that insolation at 20 degrees North is higher in the summer than it is at any time on the equator. The reason for that is that, at 20 degrees North, when the sun is directly overhead, the days are longer than they are when the sun is directly overhead on the equator. And with a longer day, and the same peak forcing we expect higher SST, which is what we see. Curiously Eschenbach draws attention to the fact that the peak temperatures are found not at the equator, but between 15 and 30 degrees North, in the Summer. But given the insolation data, that is just what we would predict. So also, given the insolation data, would we predict that peak summer temperatures through out the tropics and near tropics would match or exceed peak equatorial temperatures, and that the closer the equator, the less variation in SST.
Eschenbach also draws attention to the shape of the Gaussians (shown in Fig 6), noting in particular that "...summer high temperature comes to a point, while the winter low is rounded". But again, however, he needs search no further for an explanation than the insolation pattern:
I mentioned in my introduction that Eschenback presents data that "...at first glance looks like evidence for his hypothesis". It should not be plain, however, that it is onlyh at a first, and superficial glance that that is true. His most convincing evidence turns out to be a direct consequene of the patterns of insolation at, or near the equator. The more direct evidence is seen to contradict his claim of a hard limit, showing as it does a less defined limit to temperatures in the warmest months - the exact opposite of what is required by his hypothesis. It is only by maintaining a superficial glance, and by not paying attention to actual forcings that his hypothesis appears to have any support at all.
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Russ R. at 09:47 AM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
KR@92,
Thanks for the link. As I promised to michael sweet, I will "put it to rest" here, and take any further "thermostat" arguments to that thread.
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Russ R. at 09:32 AM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Dikran Marsupial @91,
"Now if you were genuinely interested in scientific discussion, you would admit that your assertion was incorrect, and possibly revise it."
Very well, you've made your case. I accept that I was incorrect and in light of the data, will revise my argument from "never" to "less than 0.1% of the time".
Moderator Response:[JH] You have reverted to your snarky persona. If you continue down this path, there will be consequences.
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Michael Whittemore at 01:37 AM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
It is really good to see politicians using skeptical science to communicate climate change. I wouldn't be surprised if they start funding the site one day.
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2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R. - I believe that the thread on Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming would the most relevant discussion, where Chris Colose states that:
...there is no compelling physical justification to suggest that the tropical sea surface temperatures must be pegged at some maximum value independent of the forcing, or that clouds/evaporation must act as some sort of tropical regulation mechanism.
I suggest taking further discussion of any 'thermostat' hypothesis there.
Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you for ferreting out the Chris Colose article. I also agree that any further discussion of Russ R's assertion about sea surface temperatures take place on its comment thread.
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:14 AM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
RussR wrote " Sea surface temperatures never get above ~30C because thunderstorms (or occasionally tropical cyclones) limit further temperature increases and bring temperatures back down."
and later complained
RussR wrote "The data I presented covered 14.2 years or around 5187 days... you're pointing to 2 of those days. I'm pointing to the other 5185 days (99.96% of the data record) which show a remarkably consistent upper boundary."
You made an assertion, if you say that something can't happen, then pointing out a single occasion on which it did happen is not a cherry pick, it is a counter example that proves your assertion to be incorrect. Now if you were genuinely interested in scientific discussion, you would admit that your assertion was incorrect, and possibly revise it. Instead you have attempted to bluster your way out of it by accusing Tom of cherry picking. Sorry, I am not impressed, you are just continuing your trollish behaviour demonstrated earlier in the thread. If you want to retain a shred of credibility, then just man up and admit your assertion was incorrect.
Moderator Response:[JH] It is also incumbent upon Russ R to provide references to published and peer-reviewed scientific papers which support his assertion.
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Russ R. at 00:00 AM on 18 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
michael sweet,
Allow me to refer you to the definition of "sloganeering" the comments policy:
- No sloganeering. Comments consisting of simple assertion of a myth already debunked by one of the main articles, and which contain no relevant counter argument or evidence from the peer reviewed literature constitutes trolling rather than genuine discussion. As such they will be deleted. If you think our debunking of one of those myths is in error, you are welcome to discuss that on the relevant thread, provided you give substantial reasons for believing the debunking is in error. It is asked that you do not clutter up threads by responding to comments that consist just of slogans.
If you would kindly point me to the main article that "debunks" my argument, then I'll put it to rest.
Moderator Response:[JH] What exactly is your "argument"?
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Russ R. at 23:54 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Tom Curtis @87 & @88,
- If your record day in Kirimati in 2010 had "very low humidity" why would it be in any way relevant to my argument about the convective behaviour of water vapour?
- The data I presented covered 14.2 years or around 5187 days... you're pointing to 2 of those days. I'm pointing to the other 5185 days (99.96% of the data record) which show a remarkably consistent upper boundary. (Where I come from, when you present an argument, but your data actually makes the exact opposite case, we call that an own goal.)
- Tarawa's weather station is located at an Bonriki International Airport. I'll leave it to you to ponder what an asphalt covered airstrip might do to daily max temperature readings.
- Pointing at the Persian Gulf SST as refuting evidence of how water vapor behaves in the tropics is a bit curious since the Persian Gulf is not in the tropics, its humidity is often negligible, and its geography as a body of water is analagous to that of an inflatible wading pool in a parking lot.
And yes, I'm still calling your October 26, 2010 Kirimati high temperature an "egregious cherry-pick"... the data are in plain view above.
Moderator Response:[JH] You are now skating on the thin ice of excessive repetition which is banned by the SkS Comments Policy.
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Kevin C at 21:48 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Oh yes, I read that the same way.
For me the huge surprise about the Shindell paper is that no-one spotted the issue before, given that its fingerprints are all over the hemispheric temperature record, and as you point out they are all over AR4 as well.
I keep asking myself whether I would have spotted it if climate were my day job. I suspect not - often the obvious is not obvious until someone points it out.
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Timothy Chase at 18:26 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Kevin C, re Otto... Looking at the article, the only point at which they acknowledge the distinction between direct and effective radiative forcing is at the end of the last paragraph:
Most of the climate models of the CMIP5 ensemble are, however, consistent with the observations used here in terms of both ECS and TCR. We note, too, that caution is required in interpreting any short period, especially a recent one for which details of forcing and energy storage inventories are still relatively unsettled: both could make significant changes to the energy budget. The estimates of the effective radiative forcing by aerosols in particular vary strongly between model-based studies and satellite data. The satellite data are still subject to biases and provide only relatively weak constraints (see Supplementary Section S2 for a sensitivity study).
Otto, Alexander, et al. "Energy budget constraints on climate response." Nature Geoscience (2013).
It seems clear that they are acknowledging the "effective radiative forcing by aerosols" as an issue that is not specifically dealt with in their paper, but which they or others may wish to turn their attention to at some later point. Incidentally, Drew Shindell is listed as one of the authors of Otto et al. (2013).
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Timothy Chase at 17:57 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Kevin C re radiative forcing... I don't which usage the authors of the different papers are employing. It really isn't my area of expertise.
However, until someone specifies otherwise, by "climate sensitivity" I would assume they mean Charney, not transient or earth system sensitivity, and by the same token, I would assume that by "radiative forcing" they mean direct radiative forcing, not effective. "Effective radiative forcing" is a derivative, more specialized concept. In this context, "direct" denotes primary usage, "effective" secondary. In the case of "climate sensitivity" refering to Charney it is more simply a matter of historical accident and common usage.
Or at least that is my best guess, not being as familiar with the literature as I might like.
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Kevin C at 16:39 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Thanks Timothy - didn't realise this was already present in the definitions of efficacy. The thing I haven't checked is whether papers like Otto et all are using direct or effective radiative forcing estimates - have you looked at this?
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Tom Curtis at 16:21 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
wideEyedPupil @1, I have responded on a more appropriate thread.
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Tom Curtis at 16:20 PM on 17 March 2014Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
Elsewhere wideEyedPupil comments:
"Interested in comment from scientists on the Media watch story "AN ALARMING STORY" on 10 March about sea level rise, describing reportage of a 6 metre sea-level rise as alramist because they omitted the 4014 prediction-come-trueth date."
The Media Watch (ABC, Australia) show has several problems, but arguably that is not one of them. As can be seen from the main post above, expected sea level rises by the end of this century vary from 0.57 to 1.1 meters, depending on the scenario, with confidence intervals of 0.81 to 1.65 meters for the warmest scenario (table 1). Those values are from a single study, and are higher than the IPCC values, who give a likely range of 0.45 - 0.82 meters for the warmest scenario by 2081-2100. That is, its upper 66% confidence range almost coincides with the lower 95% confidence range of the study above. I have heard several times that scientist making emperical projections of sea level rise think the IPCC relied to heavilly on models, and gave too low a value, but only a few expect sea level rises above 2 meters as even an upper bound. Those few (best typified by Hansen), argue not that very high sea level rises are likely, but that they are possible, and sufficiently probable that they should be taken into account in establishing climate policy. For what it is worth, I disagree with those very few, but several SkS regulars agree with them.
Given that background, it is at minimum careless sensationalism to not mention the timescale involved, particularly given that a more or less specific time was given the the paper being reported on.
Having said that, the Media Watch article is rife with inaccuracies itself. To start with (and most germaine), the two thousand year interval in the study was chosen as a period in which equilibrium will have been reached. That means they are predicting the sea level rise will be reached by 4014 AD, but do not specify that it will not be reached before than. Potentially much before them. In fact, while I consider it unlikely that the full sea level rise will be reached by 2100, it is certainly possible that it could be reached by 2500, and probable that it will reached by 3000 AD. Indeed, technically the article does not preclude Hansen's worst fears being realized, and the full sea level rise being reached in as little as 150 to 200 years. So, if leaving out the date is careless sensationalism, not specifying that the paper is stating the latest possible date for the realization of sea level rise must be considered careless soft pedalling of a real threat.
Even worse, is Media Watch's describing a 6.9 Meter rise in Sea Level as "a worst case scenario". In fact, the paper in question mentions the number 6.9 exactly once. In table 1 it shows as the median (not worst case) percentage of the current population displaced by sea level rise with a temperature of 3 C (again, not the worst case examined). So it is neither a worst case, nor even a value for sea level rise.
The actual values for sea level rise used in the paper comes from another paper from the same authors plus others. That paper indicates a median sea level rise of 2.3 Meters per degree C increase in temperature. It does not specify the error, but it is shown in figure Figure 2 E:
The worst temperature case looked at in the original paper is a 5 C rise, and as can be seen, even with a 4 C rise, the worst case (95%) at even 4 C is well above 12 meters. Even the median case at 5 C is an 11.5 meter sea level rise, so that Media Watch has stated as a worst case a value 40% less than the median value of the highest temperature examined.
What is worse is that while 5 C is at the upper end of the likely range (66% confidence interval) for BAU (RCP 8.5) as given by the IPCC, that is just for warming until 2100. By 2400 warming could procede well beyond that point so that 5 C may be the worst case examined, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a worse case scenario.
Consequently, while Media Watch's limited point is fair, in making it they have made far worse errors in the opposite direction - errors that in fact contradict the study they are reporting on rather than merely eliding ambiguous information.
(Having looked at this, I will be notifying Media Watch of these issues.)
Moderator Response:[RH] Tweaked image width.
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chriskoz at 15:52 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
wideEyedPupil@1,
Weekly Digest is the right place to raise any topic, so you don't need to be appologetic. However, this site is dedicated to discuss the science, not the primitive junk alarmism of the story you are pointing. It's a waste of time to dsicuss such junk so I bet no one will care.
The only exempt from this story worth discussing here is:
Yes, we’re talking [...] 2000 years away.
By which time the world could have far worse things to worry about.
(i.e. climate change impacts on industrial civilisation's tourism and entertainment industry in this case) but of course the assertion is lost (left unpursued) among junk.
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wideEyedPupil at 12:19 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
Interested in comment from scientists on the Media watch story "AN ALARMING STORY" on 10 March about sea level rise, describing reportage of a 6 metre sea-level rise as alramist because they omitted the 4014 prediction-come-trueth date.
Apart from completely ignoring the issue of the climatic tipping points (methane burps in polar regions etc) for such an occurance potentially being yesterday, tomorrow or in the next couple of decades, the certainty of 2000 years for 6m seemed a little over-cofident to me as a lay follower of claimte science (having passed my Climate Change Conversations introduction to CC course on Coursera last year ;-] run by UBC)
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3960467.htm
Anyone care to discuss. I don't think it's possible for me to create my own thread on SkS hence this thread hyjack, apologies if I've broken etique.
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Klapper at 12:00 PM on 17 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
"In 2013 the Earth’s oceans accumulated energy at a rate of 12 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second"
An utterly irrelevant metric. From a dataset downloaded from this link:
...you can see that the delta ZJs for the world ocean between 1959 and 1960 are -8.7 - (-5.5) = 3.2ZJs or approximately 16 Hiroshima's per second. Please check my math, but even if it is wrong, the use of one year's data to show how serious global warming is verges on the absurd.
Moderator Response:[RH] Hotlinked URL that was breaking page formatting.
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Timothy Chase at 11:10 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Kevin C. wrote:
The quote you picked up refers to the Shindell paper. Shindell doesn't contest the lower aerosol forcing, but points out that the lower forcing is countered by the fact that the aerosols are being emitted in regions where they have a greater impact on temperature, which has the same impact on global mean temperatures as if the aerosol effect were stronger again.
From what I can see, Shindell is simply applying the concept of climate efficacy to industrial aerosols.
In the fourth IPCC assessment, efficacy is defined:
Efficacy (E) is defined as the ratio of the climate sensitivity parameter for a given forcing agent (λi) to the climate sensitivity parameter for CO2 changes, that is, Ei = λi / λCO2 (Joshi et al., 2003; Hansen and Nazarenko, 2004). Efficacy can then be used to define an effective RF (= EiRFi) (Joshi et al., 2003; Hansen et al., 2005).
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
2.8.5 Efficacy and Effective Radiative Forcing
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8-5.htmlThe reason why different forcings have different efficacies is largely a matter of how the forcing is spatially distributed:
The efficacy primarily depends on the spatial structure of the forcings and the way they project onto the various different feedback mechanisms (Boer and Yu, 2003b).
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
2.8.5.1 Generic Understanding
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8-5-1.htmlLatitude is particularly important:
Nearly all studies that examine it find that high-latitude forcings have higher efficacies than tropical forcings.
ibid.
... and this is precisely what Shindell has keyed in on with respect to anthropogenic reflective aerosols.
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Tom Curtis at 07:48 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
For the record, Tarawa has a minimum recent recorded temperature of 14 C, and several in the vicinity of 17C. I therefore have no grounds to reject the 13 C recorded in Kirimati as spurious. The 2 C and 0 C, on the other hand, are suspicious, having no analogue temperatures in nearby stations, nor any ready explanation (that I can think of).
Also, as an addendum to my prior post - the 2010 record temperature at Kirimati coincides with a day with zero cloud cover, very low humidity, and very low wind speeds - a combination that supports my hypothesis as to the cause, and that it is not spurious.
A further addendum - Russ R has not shifted the grounds of criticizing that falsifying data. He is no longer claiming a cherry pick as such, but has not apologized for his unwarranted accusation.
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Tom Curtis at 07:35 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @86, the possibility that the reading was spurious occurred to me when I first saw it. However, to accept it as spurious we need to also treat the similar reading in 2005 as spurious, and the (at least) two readings of 40 C at Tarawa as spurious. In fact, for Tarawa, the highest recorded temperatures by month are:
Jan: 38 C
Feb: 34 C
Mar: 40 C
April: 34 C
May: 33 C
June: 38 C
July: 34 C
Aug: 34 C
Sep: 37C
Oct: 34 C
Nov: 34 C
Dec: 40 C
That's five out of twelve monthly records you will want to elliminate as spurious, plus two from Kirimati. You realy don't like data that contradicts your claims. Do you?
Further, all that is required for a very high land temperature on Kirrimati or Tarawa is a very still day, such that air over land has longer to heat up and ocean water warms rapidly at the surface due to decreased wind driven mixing (and lagoon water even more so due to shallow depth). I wonder, how could an Island that lies in the Inter Tropical Conergence Zone experience a day or two with little or no wind?
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Kevin C at 05:29 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Wili: The new scientist article is right, but there are several things going on at once.
Recent studies have generally show a reduced aerosol cooling effect. Which means a stronger total forcing. However to explain recent climate change from a stronger forcing means a lower sensitivity. So on the one hand we expect greater forcing, and on the other lower sensitivity. If aerosols were expected to grow in proportion to ghgs then projections would be unaffected.
However all the RCP scenarios show reduced aerosol emissions in the future, so the lower sensitivity leads to lower warming projections.
The quote you picked up refers to the Shindell paper. Shindell doesn't contest the lower aerosol forcing, but points out that the lower forcing is countered by the fact that the aerosols are being emitted in regions where they have a greater impact on temperature, which has the same impact on global mean temperatures as if the aerosol effect were stronger again.
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michael sweet at 01:58 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Following one of Tom's links I found this graph:
original site Interestingly, Russ's temperature graph was just above it (Russ does not link data).
Kiritimati is located just above the "d" in Trade Winds, approximately 3,000 miles from the warm pool. Tarawa is just below the "K" in Kirabati, approximately 500 miles from the warm pool and 1000 miles from the center of the warm pool. I note that the warm pool is not near any continents. Russ is trying to support his wild claim that ocean temperatures are limited by using data 3,000 miles from the hot locations of the Pacific ocean. It is impossible to support Russ's wild claim using this data. Data from warm areas must be used. Tom's explaination that the temperature is stable from thermal mass and current mixing completely explains the ocean temperatures at Kiritimati.
The temperatures Russ is currently arguing over are land temperatures. It is difficult to understand how land temperatures could possibly relate to a "wall" for ocean temperatures. It wastes our time when Russ makes these distracting arguments for arguments sake.
Russ has provided no citations to support his wild claim that ocean temperatures are limited. This would be in the peer reviewed literature if it was even a remote possibility. It is a waste of time for Russ to cite land temperatures 3,000 miles from the hottest ocean to support his wild claim.
It is sloganeering to continue to post unsupported arguments. At a scientific blog peer reviewed data is required. Russ should be required to support his arguments like everyone else.
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wili at 01:33 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Thanks for that explanation, link, and graph (and for ignoring my bone-headed punctuation and spelling errors!). If I can try your patience a bit further, what do those watts per meter squared measurments translate into in terms of degress C of warming that aerosols are responsible for temporarily blocking?
So given that Schmidt paper, am I right that the "How Much Hotter..." article was wrong when they said: "the latest findings show that the cooling effect of aerosol pollution from factories and fires has been underestimated." Do you suppose that they were unaware of that article and were just looking at earlier articles that showed an increased effect of aerosols? -
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Have experienced the same problem as shoyemore, but it seems to be working now. Hopefully I’ll soon be able to update the Norwegian translation of The Big Picture.
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Russ R. at 01:16 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Tom Curtis,
Do you honestly believe that the 37C measurement you're pointing to is any more accurate or reliable than the 13C outlier in 2007 or the 2C reading in 2006?
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Micawber at 23:31 PM on 16 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
This excellent post points to a fundamental shift in global warming from the trivial 7% in air to the majority 93% in oceans. Indeed is heat captured over 70% of earth’s surface that includes the 8.5% in shelf seas <200m where most impacts are found.
Climatologists deal in anomalies in 30-year records as James Wright pointed out. Moreover, they rely on records collected by others and never go to sea to collect verification ground truth data. Their data at the surface are not to ocean standards that require >3,000 times more accuracy to account for the higher heat capacity (specific heat seawater: air). Moreover, salinity in the ocean surface has never been routinely collected. Seawater density is critically important because fresh warm water floats over saltier cool water.
The Levitus et al (2012) data incorporates the unverified SST data from 1955-1995 that has only sparse coverage as they show in their paper. It has only complete surface temperature coverage over rough degree grid where surface data is averaged over the top 100m from 1995.
The conclusion, that Earth is warming faster than ever before, is very securely based on ocean data. The huge heat capacity smoothes out the great swings in heating and cooling observed on land and in air. Moreover, as James states the main factor is greenhouse gas heat imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
However, the 93% in the oceans is trapped by the almost completely unstudied top 2m of the ocean as was pointed out in a recent discussion paper (http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/11/C54/2014/osd-11-C54-2014-supplement.pdf).
Using rare daily timeseries, the authors quantify ocean warming as currently more than 1ºC in twenty years. This is strong confirmation of dangerously accelerating global warming.
Moreover, it is based on real ground truth data un-modified by models or statistics. They go on to show the post-1986 accelerated temperature rise coincides with a rapid decline in solar radiation. I suppose these are two hockey sticks in opposite directions. This strongly suggests that greenhouse gas contribution to heat imbalance now outweighs not only volcanic variations but also variations in solar activity from the Maunder Minimum to the modern 20th Solar High.
It also suggests that it masks all the global ocean indices such as ENSO, PDO, and NAO that are known to depend on the 22y Hale Cycle and the more familiar 11.6y sunspot cycles. This suggests that predictions, based on atmospheric statistical assumptions, of changes of El Nino/La Nina are unlikely to be accurate. ENSO cycles in the 21st century have been far less predictable. The ocean warming due to greenhouse gases is a good physics-based reason for the observed changes.
It will be very difficult to change climate deniers opinions.
As Alistair Fraser pointed out on his website on Bad Science “Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.” Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, (1471-1530). (A. B. Fraser, (http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html)
Fraser also pointed out that evaporation does not depend on relative humidity as assumed in many ocean models, but on sea surface temperature. In practice that means evaporation increases by 7% per degree rise in temperature (Precipitation rises by 2-3%). The presence of air is not relevant to vapour pressure that determines evaporation (http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/people/babin/vapor/index.html).
The Matthews and Matthews (2014) discussion confirms and quantifies James Wright’s alarming findings. They present the first measurement of evaporation free from precipitation. They show evaporation and heat sequestration is critically dependent on salinity. The north Pacific ocean heat is trapped in the top 2m and is twice that of the southern ocean with salinity >35.5‰ (the authors use parts per thousand as appropriate at the surface). Moreover, they show from long-timeseries data that North Atlantic/Arctic heating has been buffered by basal icemelt in three phases. The post-1986 accelerating temperature rise they suggest is due to decreasing amounts of floating ice.
Indeed, they suggest, on the basis of real ground truth data and basic physics, that the warming will continue as long as we have the top of the atmosphere heat imbalance. It is not enough to stop adding greenhouse gases. Climatologists assume that if you do that, the heat balance will eventually be restored by back radiation. However, there is no back radiation from 2m below the sea surface. They point out that hurricanes can draw cooling water from below if they linger long enough. It is the storm’s speed over the ground that determines whether it grows into Hurricane Force 5 (fast moving), or is downgraded to tropical storm (slow moving). That could account for the first hurricanes seen in UK this spring.
Pacific warm pools have seen sustained temperatures of 32ºF from more normal 28ºC. That implies an increase in evaporation and precipitation of almost 30% above long-term averages. This is the likely explanation for excess precipitation in 2011 over SE Asia, Australia and S America that lowered global sealevels by 3mm. It could also explain why container shipping companies in the western Pacific now use two Beaufort classes above Hurricane force 12 to describe Pacific Typhoons.
James, you have presented a fundamental shift in our understanding of global warming.
There needs to be a major shift in funding to focus on the top 2m of ocean.
Unfortunately, the manned weatherships and other monitoring programs were discontinued just before the rapid warming began. Manned weatherships would have been very useful for seeing first hand what is really happening. They could be quickly deployed to help aircraft or ships in distress. Even if the aircraft turned off its tracking devices, I suspect weatherships could track them.
Manned ocean programs have been savagely cut in the everywhere including UK, US and Canada.
We need to lobby to get funding restored to counter the devastating cuts shown in this video:
Silence of the Labs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms45N_mc50Y.
Congratulations! You have made a major contribution to science of importance to all mankind. SKS has a great record in countering false arguments and bad science. You now have the mother of all battles to fight. No one has argued that we must actually reduce greenhouse gases to former stable levels. But that is what is demanded if ocean warming and acidification is to managed and mitigated.
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