How much sunlight makes it to the surface?
We all know how powerful clouds are. Just stand outside on a patchy day — feel the goosebumps. These megaton floating conglomerates of water act as vast shields — they cover 60% of the surface of Earth, and even a small change makes a big difference. While changes in the total amount of direct sunlight coming off the sun are very small, the changes to the amount of reflecting surfaces floating above Earth are, proportionally, at least twice as large, and possibly much much more influential. The IPCC includes changes in sunlight (TSI), so it does not make sense to ignore the larger and more powerful changes in the Earth’s albedo (fraction of sunlight that is reflected) due to “external” factors (due to factors other than feedbacks to surface warming). Both contribute to the amount of sunlight heating the surface, or “absorbed solar radiation” (ASR) (before feedbacks).
There are lots of reasons clouds might change that are not included in standard climate models. Just for starters — cosmic rays may seed cloud formation. Aerosols released by plants, plankton and marine life do — some aerosols are included, but new varieties are turning up in studies. We know the solar magnetic field influences cosmic rays. Who knows what other effects solar factors have on clouds — through changes in spectral properties (like UV versus visible light), or through the solar wind. The IPCC admits they are weak in this area, saying “Clouds and aerosols continue to contribute the largest uncertainty…”.[IPCC, AR5, p592 Ch 7]. They also admit that different models handle them in different ways and they have “low confidence” in many aspects of cloud feedback. But if influences on clouds are a forcing, and they have been omitted, it turns their models inside out.
David compares the data on variation of albedo to the observed variation in total solar radiation, and finds that the former has at least twice the impact on surface warming. Obviously, any alternative climate model has to include “EDA” – external driven albedo — and since it is externally-driven, it is, by definition, a forcing.
We haven’t seen this comparison done elsewhere, though it may have been.
— Jo
10. Externally-Driven Albedo (EDA)
Dr David Evans, 7 October 2015, David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Intro, Previous, Next, Nomenclature.
Having discussed the main errors in the conventional basic climate model — heavy reliance on unverifiable partial derivatives, omission of feedbacks that respond to climate drivers directly rather than to surface warming, and applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences — this blog series now moves on to its second part, constructing an alternative, improved basic model for estimating the sensitivity to increasing CO2. (The third and final part of the series will be aimed at finding what did cause recent global warming, where the search will result in the notch-delay hypothesis.)
Albedo changes that are not in response to surface warming — those presumably driven by external forces — will come to play a potentially important role in climate modeling, so we need to discuss them before we embark on the alternative basic model. The externally-driven albedo changes omitted from the conventional basic climate model and the big computerized climate models (GCMs).
Introduction
Albedo is the reflection of incoming radiation from the Sun back out to space, mainly by clouds and ice. Reflected radiation does not heat the Earth. The amount of albedo is very significant — about 30%. That is, only about 70% of the sunlight (or to be more exact, of the total solar irradiance or TSI) incident on the Earth contributes to heating the Earth. We call that 70% the absorbed solar radiation (ASR).
The significance of albedo is that it only takes a small change in albedo to make a big difference to the amount of ASR, and thus to the surface temperature. It’s like a tap on a fire hose. Unfortunately albedo is difficult to measure, and data only covers a short period.
The only changes in albedo accounted for in the conventional climate models are changes occurring as a result of feedbacks in response to surface warming. For example, surface warming reduces the area covered by highly-reflective ice and snow, so the albedo decreases and ASR increases. Or, surface temperature affects plant life which affects ground cover and thus albedo. Other effects of surface warming are thought to influence the amount and types of clouds, which also change albedo. We accept the best estimates of the effect of surface warming on albedo in AR5, which are expressed as the albedo feedbacks to surface warming in the final diagram of the conventional model, in Fig. 2 of post 9 (where the albedo feedbacks are separated from the non-albedo feedbacks).
“Externally-driven albedo” (EDA) is albedo that is not attributable to feedbacks in response to surface warming. Possibly due to non-terrestrial influences, EDA includes any changes in albedo due to modulation by the Sun. For instance, cosmic rays are widely suspected of encouraging cloud formation, or any number of solar effects might change the proportions of ozone and the relative heights of the tropopause at the poles and equator, which affects jetstreams and the amount of clouds. EDA might also involve terrestrial agents, such as cloud changes owing to aerosols released by plankton, or volcanic eruptions could change the lower stratospheric temperature which in turn changes albedo.
The total change in albedo is the change in EDA plus the change in albedo feedbacks in response to surface warming.
The proportional-variation argument here suggests that changes in EDA may be a larger influence on surface warming than the direct effect of changing TSI — because the proportional variation in albedo, even after taking out the variation due to surface albedo feedbacks, is much larger than the proportional variation in TSI. Hence we will include EDA in our alternative model.
Theory
The increase in the no-feedbacks ASR, ΔANF, is the increase in ASR that is independent of surface warming; see Fig. 2 of post 9. It can be partitioned into the part due to increasing EDA, and the part due to increasing TSI (via the direct heating effect of TSI):
The ASR at any time is
because the TSI is estimated for 1 AU (i.e. at the average distance of the Earth from the Sun) while the cross section of a sphere is only a quarter of its surface area, so each square meter on Earth only receives a quarter of the TSI at 1 AU on average. In the starting steady state:
Let the EDA increase by ΔαE, and the TSI increase by ΔS, during the time to the final steady state. Then the increase in ASR due to EDA and the direct heating effect of TSI during that time is
to first order. Comparing this to Eq. (1), we get the obvious result that
So how do the changes in ASR due to EDA and TSI compare, in a relative sense?
Data
TSI, known as “the solar constant” until 1979 when satellite measurements began, has varied less than 1.8 W m−2, or 0.13%, over the 400 years since sunspot records began, according to the reconstruction of Lean (2000) [1] with the background corrections of Wang, Lean, and Sheeley (2005) [2]. Reconstructions favored by the IPCC (e.g. Kirvova’s, smilar to Svalgaard’s) say the variation is even smaller.
Albedo data is sketchy, but sufficient for a lower bound on proportional variation.
Palle, Goode, and Montanes-Rodriguez (2008) [3] found some agreement between earthshine, the ISCCP FD product, and satellite (CERES) observations: from 1984 to 1998 the first two sources (CERES started in 2000) showed a fall in smoothed reflected solar radiation (upwelling SW) of ~1% or ~1.0 W m−2, then a rise by almost as much to mid-2000, then a roughly constant level to 2005 when the data stops. Some confirmation comes from Pinker, Zhang, and Dutton (2005) [4], who found that ASR increased from 1984 to 1998 by ~0.16 W m−2 per year, suggesting a fall in reflected solar radiation of ~2.2 W m−2 (the 11-year smoothed TSI rose ~0.3 W m−2 in that period, accounting for only (0.3/4) * 0.7 or ~0.05 W m−2), before levelling off then decreasing after 2000. We conclude there was a fall in reflected radiation of at least ~1.0 W m−2, which, since total reflected radiation is ~100 W m−2, corresponds to a change in albedo of ~1% (from say 30.0% to 29.7%). This is being conservative: even the CERES data from 2000 to 2004 (Stephens et. al., 2015 [5]) shows variation of ~2 W m−2 in reflected radiation, or albedo variation of ~2%.
Albedo feedback from 1984 to 1998 due to surface warming is responsible for fαΔTS, or ~(0.4±0.5) × 0.35 or 0.14±0.18 W m−2, leaving a fall of at least 0.86±0.18 W m−2 in reflected solar radiation.
Thus the proportional variation in EDA from 1984 to 1998 was at least ~0.86±0.18% (perhaps from 30.0% to 29.74±0.05%). These figures can only understate the relative variation of EDA, due to the relative shortness of the period from 1984 to 1998, compared to the last 400 years for TSI.
Conclusion
Plugging these proportional variations into Eq. (6),
ASR directly drives surface temperature, so the effect of changes in EDA on surface warming is at least twice as great as the direct effect of changes in TSI, and possibly much more. (And if the reconstructions that say the TSI variations are smaller are correct, then the relative influence of EDA is even larger.)
Given that the direct effect of changes in TSI is worth taking into account in climate models, so is EDA.
References
[1^] Lean, J. (2000). Evolution of the Sun’s Spectral Irradiance Since the Maunder Minimum. Geophysical Research Letters, 2425-2428.
[2^] Wang, Y. M., Lean, J. L., & Sheeley, N. R. (2005). Modeling the Sun’s Magnetic Field and Irradiance Since 1713. Astrophysical Journal, 522-538.
[3^] Palle, E., Goode, P. R., & Montanes-Rodriguez, P. (2008). Inter-annual variations in Earth’s reflectance 1999 – 2007. Journal of Geophysical Research.
[4^] Pinker, R. T., Zhang, B., & Dutton, E. G. (2005). Do Satellites Detect Trends in Surface Solar Radiation? Science, Vol. 38, 6 May 2005, 850 – 854.
[5^] Stephens, G. L., O’Brien, D., Webster, P. J., Pilewski, P., Kato, S., & Li, J.-l. (2015). The albedo of Earth. Reviews of Geophysics, 53, doi:10.1002/2014RG000449.
This is something that the public could easily be led to understand.
If it shows as a major factor then all you need is a few mirrors with different reflective properties and surface texture to illustrate the point that Albedo determines whether energy is trapped in the Earth or reflected to deep space.
A visual display with light meters and thermometers running would be great.
Something is needed to counter that awful damnation of CO2 on that Myth Busters programme that had 4 large plastic containers of various air mixes.
Result; more CO2 causes warming.
For those of us who watched the deal closely you could see that the location of the 4 lamps and the High CO2 container were not randomly chosen.
Back to the post.
Apart from the equations, a good prospect for downing the CAGW Myth in the eyes of the taxpayer.
🙂 KK
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If I may offer some public feedback (no pun) to Jo and David after 3 months of discussing Climate Change with people at my work there is a general interest but more so recently as they’re aware Australia is signing so called UN treaties with people they don’t know or want telling us how to run our country.
Best moment today was my workmate informing me of a Scientist from WA who has mathematically worked out how the IPCC got their warming predictions so wrong, he told me people are discussing it on Facebook and are motivated by the fact the scientist is Australian and he actually helped start the first investigations into the greenhouse theory.
I was so happy I almost cried, keep going David people are listening and learning, they’re sick of the snake oil salesmen and know how to spot them, apologies for being OT but I just had to tell someone, cheers.
873
Here is some further data supporting the albedo influence.
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ftp://bbso.njit.edu/pub/staff/pgoode/website/publications/Palle_etal_2005a_GRL.pdf
Traditionally the Earth’s reflectance has been assumed to be roughly constant, but large decadal variability, not reproduced by current climate models, has been reported lately from a variety of sources. There is a consistent picture among all data sets by which the Earth’s albedo has decreased over the 1985-2000 interval. The amplitude of this decrease ranges from 2-3 W/m2 to 6-7 W/m2 but any value inside these ranges is highly climatologically significant and implies major changes in the Earth’s radiation budget.
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http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/8505/2013/acp-13-8505-2013.html
[T]here has been a global net decrease [of 3.6%] in 340 nm cloud plus aerosol reflectivity [which has led to] an increase of 2.7 W m−2 of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface and an increase of 1.4% or 2.3 W m−2 absorbed by the surface [between 1979 and 2011].
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010JD015396/abstract
We find distinct patterns of dimming and brightening in the aerosol optical depth and thus clear-sky downward surface shortwave radiation (SSR) in all analyzed subregions.The strongest brightening between 1973 and 1998 under clear-sky conditions is found in mid-Europe (+3.4 W m−2 per decade [8.5 W m−2 total], in line with observations).
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http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/850.abstract
Long-term variations in solar radiation at Earth’s surface (S) can affect our climate, the hydrological cycle, plant photosynthesis, and solar power. We observed an overall increase in S [solar radiation] from 1983 to 2001 at a rate of 0.16 watts per square meter (0.10%) per year [3.04 W/m-2 total]
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064410/abstract
The warming is faster at higher altitudes in Asia and Western North America, but the opposite is observed over Central Europe and Eastern North America which have received more short-wave radiation (brightening) associated with a decrease of aerosols and clouds since the 1980s. We found that altitudinal differences in air pollution (brightening), with observations showing more short-wave radiation received at low altitudes than at mountains, modulate the warming-elevation relationships.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008JD011290/abstract
Global solar irradiance showed a significant fluctuation during the last 90 years. It increased from 1920 to 1940s/1950s, thereafter it decreased toward late 1980s. In early 1990s 75% of the globe indicated the increasing trend of solar irradiance, while the remaining area continued to lose solar radiation. The magnitudes of the variation are estimated at +12 W m 2 [1920-1940s/1950s], – 8 W m 2 [1950s-1980s], and +8 Wm2 [early 1990s-2005], for the first brightening, for the dimming, and the recentbrightening periods, respectively.
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http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00482.1?journalCode=clim
Surface incident solar radiation G determines our climate and environment…Data from this summation method suggest that surface incident solar radiation increased at a rate of 6.6 W m−2/decade−1 (3.6%/ decade) from 1992 to 2002 (brightening) at selected sites.
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http://www.sciencemag.org/content/295/5556/841
It is widely assumed that variations in Earth’s radiative energy budget at large time and space scales are small. We present new evidence from a compilation of over two decades of accurate satellite data that the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) tropical radiative energy budget is much more dynamic and variable than previously thought. Results indicate that the radiation budget changes are caused by changes in tropical mean cloudiness. The results of several current climate model simulations fail to predict this large observed variation in tropical energy budget. The missing variability in the models highlights the critical need to improve cloud modeling in the tropics so that prediction of tropical climate on interannual and decadal time scales can be improved.
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http://webster.eas.gatech.edu/Papers/albedo2015.pdf
Abstract: The fraction of the incoming solar energy scattered by Earth back to space is referred to as the planetary albedo. This reflected energy is a fundamental component of the Earth’s energy balance, and the processes that govern its magnitude, distribution, and variability shape Earth’s climate and climate change.
Summary: [T]he amount of solar energy reflected from each hemisphere is essentially identical. This symmetry appears in broadband data but not in spectral radiances, thus hinting at the importance of such spectral data as a diagnostic tool for studying Earth’s climate system. Again, the cloudiness of the planet is the principal regulatory agent that maintains this symmetry with the increased energy reflected from SH clouds precisely balancing the larger reflections from NH land masses.
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http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/8635/2012/acp-12-8635-2012.pdf
Solar radiation incident at the Earth’s surface, also known as surface solar radiation (SSR), is the fundamental source of energy in the climate system, and consequently the source of life on our planet, due to its central role in the surface energy balance and for processes such as evaporation and the water cycle or plant photosynthesis (e.g. Wild, 2009, 2012). Here we report a significant increase of +2.68 W m−2 per decade during the 1981–2010 period, slightly higher than the reported trends in Switzerland by Ruckstuhl and Norris (2009) (+1.8 W m−2 per decade). Norris and Wild (2007) estimated a widespread increase in clear-sky SSR over whole Europe around +2.0–2.3 W m−2 per decade, which is in good agreement with the present study.
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212095514000728
This study analyses the interannual variability of sunshine duration (SDU) at the urban area of Athens from 1897 to 2011. Observations of total cloud cover (TCC) are also used for a better interpretation of SDU variations. The annual SDU in Athens has increased by +8% (+19 h/decade) over the past century, mainly due to increase in the summer and spring SDU, however, distinct sub periods with decreasing and increasing trends are also discerned. SDU in Athens has undergone an abrupt increase during 1940s with early 1950s being the brightest period of the record. For long periods the course of SDU mirrors TCC, indicating a strong negative correlation between the two variables, nevertheless during the last three decades, both variables reveal trends of the same sign (more evident in spring). Under all-sky conditions, annual SDU decreased by approximately 7% from 1950s to 1980s and increased by 3% thereafter. Under clear sky conditions, the increase of SDU after 1980s is larger, amounting to 9%. Singular spectrum analysis and Continuous Wavelet Transform indicated significant non-linear trends of SDU and an intermittent oscillation, centered at 2.9–3.0 yrs.
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http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/12251/2014/acp-14-12251-2014.html
Concerning the global solar radiation, many publications agree on the existence of a solar dimming period between 1970 and 1985 and a subsequent solar brightening period (Norris and Wild, 2007; Solomon et al., 2007; Makowski et al., 2009; Stjern et al., 2009; Wild et al., 2009; Sanchez-Lorenzo and Wild, 2012). Different studies have calculated the trend in Sg after 1985. The trend in Sg [global solar radiation] from GEBA (Global Energy Balance Archive; between 1987 and 2002 is equal to +1.4 ( 3.4)Wm-2 per decade according to Norris and Wild (2007). Stjern et al. (2009) found a total change in the mean surface solar radiation trend over 11 stations in northern Europe of +4.4% between 1983 and 2003. In the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Solomon et al., 2007), 421 sites were analyzed; between 1992 and 2002, the change of all-sky surface solar radiation was equal to 0.66Wm-2 per year. Wild et al. (2009) investigated the global solar radiation from 133 stations from GEBA/World Radiation Data Centre belonging to different regions in Europe. All series showed an increase over the entire period, with a pronounced upward tendency since 2000. For the Benelux region, the linear change between 1985 and 2005 is equal to +0.42Wm-2 per year, compared to the pan-European average trend of +0.33Wm-2 per year (or +0.24Wm-2 if the anomaly of the 2003 heat wave is excluded) (Wild et al. 2009). Our trend at Uccle of +0.5 ( 0.2)Wm-2 per year (or +4% per decade) agrees within the error bars with the results from Wild et al. (2009).
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425713004161
Global [surface solar] radiation has an overall positive, and significant, trend [1983-2010] over the Meteosat disk which is mainly due to a negative trend in the effective cloud albedo, i.e., a decrease in cloudiness. Trends due to changes in the clear sky radiation are small and only induced by trends in the water vapor fields. Trends caused by changes in the direct effects of atmospheric aerosol are not represented because an aerosol climatology is used.
All considered regions show positive trends for the extended CM SAF surface radiation dataset pointing to an increase in solar surface radiation and, thus, a brightening by either a decrease in cloudiness or a decreased atmospheric absorption of solar radiation. However, the extent and also the significance of the trends in the different regions vary substantially. The trend for Europe of 4.35 W m− 2 dec− 1 is in the order of trends derived from surface measurements by Wild (2012) of 2 W m− 2 dec− 1 for the 1980s to 2000 and 3 W m− 2 dec− 1 after 2000.
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http://nml.yonsei.ac.kr/front/bbs/paper/rad/RAD_2005-3_Wild_et_al.pdf
A similar reversal to brightening in the 1990s has been found on a global scale in a recent study that estimates surface solar radiation from satellite data. This indicates that the surface measurements may indeed pick up a largescale signal. The changes in both satellite derived and measured surface insolation data are also in line with changes in global cloudiness provided by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP), which show an increase until the late 1980s and a decrease thereafter, on the order of 5% from the late 1980s to 2002. A recent reconstruction of planetary albedo based on the earthshine method, which also depends on ISCCP cloud data, reports a similar decrease during the 1990s. Over the period covered so far by BSRN (1992 to 2001), the decrease in earth reflectance corresponds to an increase of 6 W m-2 in absorbed solar radiation by the globe. The overall change observed at the BSRN sites, estimated as an average of the slopes at the sites in Fig. 2A, is 0.66 W m-2 per year (6.6 W m-2 over the entire BSRN period).
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL034842/full
The surface net radiation (surface radiation balance) is the key driver behind the global hydrological cycle. Here we present a first-order trend estimate for the 15-year period 1986–2000, which suggests that surface net radiation over land has rapidly increased by about 2 Wm−2 per decade, after several decades with no evidence for an increase. This recent increase is caused by increases in both downward solar radiation (due to a more transparent atmosphere) and downward thermal radiation (due to enhanced concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse-gases). The positive trend in surface net radiation is consistent with the observed increase in land precipitation (3.5 mmy−1 per decade between 1986 and 2000) and the associated intensification of the land-based hydrological cycle.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL034228/full
SDR [shortwave downward radiation] annual mean time series [was] averaged over the eight German and the 25 Swiss sites for all-sky (all measured situations), cloud-free and cloudy periods. All-sky solar irradiance (SDR) shows positive trends from 1981 to 2005 at the German and the Swiss sites. The average increase in SDR at all stations is +2.99 [+0.52 to +5.46] W/m-2 per decade. All-sky radiation trends are largely affected by the year 2003, with strongly reduced cloudiness and hence increased shortwave radiation during the extreme summer.
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http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kaicun_Wang/publication/224138562_Review_on_Estimation_of_Land_Surface_Radiation_and_Energy_Budgets_From_Ground_Measurement_Remote_Sensing_and_Model_Simulations/links/0912f50962ddc826c7000000.pdf
Global “brightening” and “dimming” has great implications for climate change and hydrological cycles. In the IPCC-AR4, continental- and global-scale surface temperatures are shown to decrease slightly from the 1950s to the 1970s, but drastically increase since the 1980s, with strongest temperature rises on northern continents. This kind of behavior matches the similar patterns of the decadal variations of insolation.
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http://file.scirp.org/Html/22-4700327_50837.htm
The reduction in total cloud cover of 6.8% [between 1984 – 2009] means that 5.4 Wm−2 (6.8% of 79) is no longer being reflected but acts instead as an extra forcing into the atmosphere… To put this [5.4 Wm-2 of solar radiative forcing via cloud cover reduction between 1984-2009] into context, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report…states that the total anthropogenic radiative forcing for 2011 relative to 1750 is 2.29 Wm−2 for all greenhouse gases and for carbon dioxide alone is 1.68 Wm−2. The increase in radiative forcing caused by the reduction in total cloud cover over 10 years is therefore more than double the IPCC’s estimated radiative forcing for all greenhouse gases and more than three times greater than the forcing by carbon dioxide alone [from 1750 to present].
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http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00040.1
A pronounced summer warming is observed in Europe since the 1980s that has been accompanied by an increase in the occurrence of heat waves. The authors show that the variance of European summer temperature is partly explained by changes in summer cloudiness. Using observation-based products of climate variables, satellite-derived cloud cover, and radiation products, the authors show that, during the 1984–2007 period, Europe has become less cloudy (except northeastern Europe) and the regions east of Europe have become cloudier in summer daytime. In response, the summer temperatures increased in the areas of total cloud cover decrease and stalled or declined in the areas of cloud cover increase. Trends in the surface shortwave radiation are generally positive (negative) in the regions with summer warming (cooling or stalled warming), whereas the signs of trends in top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflected shortwave radiation are reversed. The authors’ results suggest that total cloud cover is either the important local factor influencing the summer temperature changes in Europe or a major indicator of these changes.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.4059/abstract
The Carpathians are the longest mountain range in Europe and a geographic barrier between Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. To investigate the climate of the area, the CARPATCLIM project members collected, quality-checked, homogenized, harmonized, and interpolated daily data for 16 meteorological variables and many derived indicators related to the period 1961–2010….Temperature was found to increase in every season, in particular in the last three decades, confirming the trends occurring in Europe; wind speed decreased in every season; cloud cover and relative humidity decreased in spring, summer, and winter, and increased in autumn, while relative sunshine duration behaved in the opposite way [increased]; precipitation and surface air pressure showed no significant trend, though they increased slightly on an annual basis. We also discuss the correlation between the variables and we highlight that in the Carpathian Region positive and negative sunshine duration anomalies are highly correlated to the corresponding temperature anomalies during the global dimming (1960s and 1970s) and brightening (1990s and 2000s) periods.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JD021322/abstract
Trends in downwelling global solar irradiance were evaluated at high elevation sites on the island of Maui, Hawaii. Departures from monthly means were assessed for the 6-month Hawaiian wet and dry seasons over the period 1988 to 2012. Linear regression analysis was used to characterize trends in each season. For the dry season (May-October), statistically significant (p ≤0.05) positive trends of 9–18 W m-2 (3–6%) per decade were found at all four high elevation stations tested. Wet season trends were not significant, except at the highest elevation station, which had a significant negative trend. No consistent trends in aerosol concentrations have been observed at high elevations in Hawaii, therefore, the observed dry-season brightening is most likely the result of decreasing cloud cover. Supporting this hypothesis, analysis of 15 years (1997-2012) of high temporal resolution Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) imagery over the Hawaiian Islands showed a statistically significant decrease in leeward cloud cover amounting to 5–11% per decade over the stations.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/94JC00604/abstract
Seven years of net surface solar irradiance (S) derived from cloud information provided by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project and 4 years of surface latent heat flux (E) derived from observations of the special sensor microwave imager were used to examine the relation between surface heat fluxes and sea surface temperature (Ts) in their global geographical distribution, seasonal cycle, and interannual variation. The relations of seasonal changes imply that evaporation cooling is significant over most of the ocean and that solar heating is the main drive for the change of Ts [sea surface temperatures] away from the equatorial wave guide where ocean dynamics may be more important.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JD021877/abstract
Radiative forcing in both the short and long-wave lengths reaching the Earth’s surface accounted for more than 80% of the inter-annual variations in the mean yearly temperatures measured at Potsdam, Germany during the last 120 years [1893-2012]. Three-quarters of the increase in the long-wave flux was due to changes in the water content of the lower atmosphere; the remainder [25%] was attributed to increases in CO2 and other anthropogenic, radiatively active gases. Over the period radiative forcing in the short-wave flux [solar forcing] slightly exceeded [0.76 W/m2 per decade] that in the long wave [0.64 W/m2 per decade].
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http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/mcph1166/mcph1166.shtml
Summary and Discussion: Shortwave radiation is likely to account for a large percentage of the unexplained temperature variance in the surface layer. Insolation at the equator under clear-sky conditions ranges between about 300 and 350 W/m-2. Using Reed’s [1977] flux formula, changes in cloudiness of only 10% would lead to changes in the net shortwave radiation at the sea surface of about 20 W/m-2. Changes in cloudiness of this magnitude are likely to occur on daily to monthly time scales, given that normally the skies are 60-70% cloud-covered owing to very active deep convection in the western equatorial Pacific.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JD022076/abstract
The contribution of clouds and aerosols to the decadal variations of downward surface shortwave radiation (SSR) is a current controversial topic. This study proposes a method, which is based on surface-based SSR measurements, aerosol observations, and radiative transfer simulations (in cloud-free and cloud- and aerosol-free scenarios), to evaluate cloud-aerosol (CARE), cloud (CRE), and aerosol (ARE) radiative effects. This method is applied to quantify the role played by, separately, clouds and aerosols on the intense brightening of the SSR observed in the Iberian Peninsula. Clouds and Earth’s Radiation Energy Budget System (CERES) and surface-based data exhibit an increase in SSR between 2003 and 2012, exceeding +10 W m−2 over this period for some areas of the peninsula. The calculations are performed for three surface-based sites: Barcelona and Valladolid (Spain), and Évora (Portugal). Ranges in monthly values of CARE, CRE, and ARE are (−80, −20), (−60, −20), and (−30, 0), respectively (in W m−2). The average trends for the analyzed period of CARE, CRE, and ARE are +7, +5, and +2 W m−2 per decade, respectively. Overall, three fourths of the SSR trend is explained by clouds, while the other one fourth is related to aerosol changes.
[Thanks Kenneth, you do remarkable lists. Very helpful. Cheers – Jo]
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Kenneth Richard,
Thank you for this list of resources on albedo.
I just posted a comment saying how helpful the links that people like yourself post here were in helping me to learn about the facts and issues related to Climate Change ©, and then your list gets posted.
Don’t you just love the way syncronicity works?
Abe
80
For clarification, three points. One, clouds exert more of an influence on albedo changes affecting surface solar radiation than aerosols:
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JD021308/abstract
It is concluded that at the sites studied changes in cloud cover rather than anthropogenic aerosols emissions played the major role in determining solar dimming and brightening during the last half century and that there are reasons to suppose that these findings may have wider relevance.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JD022076/abstract
The contribution of clouds and aerosols to the decadal variations of downward surface shortwave radiation (SSR) is a current controversial topic. Overall, three fourths of the SSR trend is explained by clouds, while the other one fourth is related to aerosol changes. The SSR trends explained by the clouds and aerosol radiative effects are in line with the observed reductions in total cloud cover and aerosol load (both at the surface and in the whole atmospheric column). Furthermore, the CRE values are compared against CERES data showing good agreement between both data series, although some discrepancies are observed in their trends.
—-
Two, aerosol depth is predominantly due to volcanism, not anthropogenic emissions.
—-
http://acd.ucar.edu/~mmills/pubs/2013_JGR_Neely_et_al.pdf
We employ model runs that include the increases in anthropogenic sulfur dioxide (SO2) over Asia and the moderate volcanic explosive injections of SO2 observed from 2000 to 2010. Comparison of the model results to observations reveals that moderate volcanic eruptions, rather than anthropogenic influences, are the primary source of the observed increases in stratospheric aerosol.
—-
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/13/12389/2013/acpd-13-12389-2013.html
Further, the strong increase of SO2 to values of 80–100 pptv in the upper stratosphere through photolysis of H2SO4 has been confirmed. The increase in the stratospheric aerosol concentration observed in the past years is caused mainly by sulfur dioxide from a number of volcano eruptions. Variation of the concentration is mainly due to volcanoes. Lower stratospheric variability of SO2 could mainly be explained by volcanic activity and no hint for a strong anthropogenic influence has been found.
—-
And three, clouds are alleged to exert a greater greenhouse (longwave) impact than CO2…
—-
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page5.php
“Carbon dioxide causes about 20 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect; water vapor accounts for about 50 percent; and clouds account for 25 percent.”
—-
…and yet, when cloudiness increases, the shortwave effects dominate over the longwave effects.
—-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/met.285/abstract
Satellite measurements and numerical forecast model reanalysis data are used to compute an updated estimate of the cloud radiative effect on the global multi-annual mean radiative energy budget of the atmosphere and surface. The cloud radiative cooling effect through reflection of short wave radiation dominates over the long wave heating effect, resulting in a net cooling of the climate system of − 21 Wm−2.
—-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016980951300330X
Highlights: The shortwave cloud effect exceeds the longwave one at both surface and top of the atmosphere, thus producing a cooling.
The cloud effects on the shortwave (SW), longwave (LW) and net all-wave radiation budgets of the Mediterranean basin were computed using a detailed radiative transfer model together with satellite and reanalysis data for surface and atmospheric properties. … Overall for the basin, the [cloud] effect on solar radiation is to produce radiative cooling at the top of atmosphere (TOA) and at the surface that more than balances the warming effects on terrestrial radiation. The result is a net radiative cooling at TOA and at the surface, equal to − 18.8 and − 15.9 Wm− 2, respectively.
—-
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/cloud%20radiative%20forcing.pdf
Quantitative estimates ofthe global distributions of cloud-radiative forcing have been obtained from the spaceborne Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) launched in 1984. For the April 1985 period, the global shortwave cloud forcing [-44.5 watts per square meter (W/m2)] due to the enhancement of planetary albedo, exceeded in magnitude the longwave cloud forcing (31.3 W/m2) resulting from the greenhouse effect of clouds. Thus, clouds had a net cooling effect on the earth. This cooling effect is large over the mid- and high-latitude oceans, with values reaching -100 W/m2. The monthly averaged longwave cloud forcing reached maximum values of 50 to 100 W/m2 over the convectively disturbed regions of the tropics. However, this heating effect is nearly canceled by a correspondingly large negative shortwave cloud forcing, which indicates the delicately balanced state of the tropics. The size of the observed net cloud forcing is about four times as large as the expected value of radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2. The shortwave and longwave components of cloud forcing are about ten times as large as those for a CO2 doubling. Hence, small changes in the cloud-radiative forcing fields can play a significant role as a climate feedback mechanism.
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Kenneth, since the Salby discussions I keep a little file for your comments, I found them particularly interesting, thanks for taking the time.
40
WOW, great list and I almost missed it. Thank you!
20
Great work Kenneth-Sorry but I hit the red in error
Regards Geoff W
30
Wow Kenneth. Great list. Thank you. There appears to a fair bit of empirical data in some of those papers.
80
Several of those papers seem to strongly reinforce the suggestion that “multiple pipes”of outgoing radiation are “interconnected”.
Very satisfying to read reinforcement of David’s work. Thank you all.
50
Are we there yet?
First (2005) we had some satellite data (Pinker, DOI: 10.1126/science.1103159 ) saying surface insolation had decreased between 1983 and 1990, then increased more rapidy to 2001, implying an overall decrease in albedo if clouds had done that.
Then (2013) we had another satellite-based study (doi:10.5194/acp-13-8505-2013) telling us albedo had a “3.6 ± 0.2% decrease” over 1979-2011.
Then (2014) de Bock’s summary paper (doi:10.5194/acp-14-12251-2014) is also saying a bunch of sites in Europe recording positive rends in insolation over 1983-2003, trends which are too great to be from TSI so again implying a decrease in cloud albedo.
I haven’t examined the other 21 papers in the list, but a brief glance through Ken’s snippets shows most of them (so far) are saying cloud albedo decreased in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now (2015) here’s this paper saying albedo is basically self-stabilising and unchanging. It’s so much unlike the others, it’s a bit difficult to believe.
The 9th paper in the list, doi:10.1002/2014RG000449, would be better summarised without leaving out the parts that are inconvenient (my emphasis):
They seem to be saying that there has been very little total albedo change and that the albedo is somehow regulated by mutually-compensating processes. Their reasoning is the NH and SH have almost identical albedo and there’s only a small heat flow between them, so whatever is keeping albedo constant is happening independently in the hemispheres and is therefore a global regulator of albedo.
I don’t think I can agree with that reasoning because each hemisphere could independently change by the same amount, especially if some external force they have in common, such as UV flux or solar wind, were to change both of them simultaneously by the same amount. Just because they are nearly identical doesn’t mean they must remain fixed.
They also discredit Palle by saying:
But despite being published in 2015 they do not say anything about Palle’s 2008 paper in JGR which claimed:
I’m not sure how Palle thinks the ES and CERES are consistent because, according to Palle’s own graph, after 2000 the ES measurement of albedo was increasing significantly (~ +0.8%) and the CERES data says it was slightly decreasing (~ -0.2%).
I have to agree that our artificial satellites are doing a better job of monitoring SW reflectance than the occasional ground-based observations of earthshine. Even if Palle’s earthshine data is ignored, there’s still a lot of papers using satellites to show an 80s/90s decrease in albedo, which is then the main contributor to that warming.
31
Yes siree, Yonnie.
Even my good wife, who pays no attention whatsoever to my rants about the subject, pointed out to me the other day that an Engineer in WA has “discovered why the IPCC is a joke”. She read it in the Oz.
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“Australia is signing so called UN treaties with people they don’t know or want telling us how to run our country.”
You mean the Trans Pacific Partnership, which puts us under the control of foreign corporations, or some other equally intrusive treaty?
25
The public isn’t interested in facts,it’s sound bites that they want,something that they don’t have to trouble their brains over,as we know it’s the sun,what’s that there is something happening on the Block tonight oh wow,I just luv the Block those people are so cleva and Gogglebox is so entertaining I just wet myself thinkin about it.
10
Gav, like it or not, YOU are part of the public. There are a lot of people that have been intentionally undereducated out there, true, and a lot more that are intentionally wrongly educated, also true, but there are a lot of people out there that DO think for themselves. It is a bit unfair when we throw a blanket of ignorance over everyone since it does include ourselves under that blanket, along with a large percentage of people looking for answers and leadership.
Now if we could only get rid of a voting system that is so easily corrupted as electronic voting machines, and get back to paper ballots where at least you can force a real recount and watch it being done. Then, perhaps, governments would once again become afraid to anger the people and drag them into agreements that are completely detrimental to their own well-being. If we don’t do that, we probably deserve to become the slaves we will be.
10
Jo
Sorry to have to pop this in here, seems the CAGW crowd are, as the americans would say, “doubling down” to crush all possible appeals to common sense under potential oppressive laws:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/06/top-international-lawyer-make-climate-change-illegal-silence-skeptics-forever/
4 legs good, 2 legs bad?
280
Thanks for putting that item up Steve.
Scary.
40
I gots four legs, each time I stumble (often)! Where is my money!
10
We tried to feed the pigs some Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. They ran away!! Where can we get more stupid pigs? 😉
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Hi Will
Is English your native language?
KK
21
How the hell would I know?
122
Good one Will.
32
It was, I chuckled heartily.
20
Hi Mark,
O/T. Please see my reply to your question in part 1 of this series.
Sorry for the delay.
Abe
10
When I see someone trying to silence me (or anyone) I know immediately that they’re afraid of what I have to say because they know they can’t effectively counter my message. If they thought they could effectively counter the message they’d have no need to silence me.
We’re slowly winning folks. We are winning. The only question is, will the victory come soon enough to save us from politicians, lawyers and foolish voters?
231
I believe we are at the “Fight” stage, not much more to go now. Go you good thing DAVID !!!!!!
50
The video clip of Ted Cruz questioning that arrogant, irnornat dolt from the Sierra Club is certainly making the rounds.
80
How are we winning? All I see is our leaders, local and overseas pushing the agenda for taxing us more all in the name of fighting climate change. How are we to stop them? Clearly public opinion doesn’t matter and the scientific facts don’t matter. The Ted Cruz video is wonderful. If that can help in any way to reverse the growth the scam then hurrah! I won’t hold my breath though. After all, this is not the first such video that exposed the scam, and probably won’t be the last. So IMHO it’s not the answer. So what is? The only answer I can see is we have to go through so much pain that the people will finally wake up and realise once and for all that we’ve been taken for a ride by the biggest scam of all time. This means they have won the war and that we have to wait for the turbulent times to come to pass. Of course I would love to be proven wrong but somehow I don’t feel I am. It’s all too little too late, unless we get a sudden mini-ice age that lasted for at least a decade.
70
Roy the answer is no,the fix was in from the start,the UN wants money,it needed a tax,the banks want to handle that easy money,the various parasites(politicians,lawyers,fund managers,stockmarkets etc) want to feed off that money,plus you have the assortment of human haters and earth worshippers coming along for the ride.
Once the policy was agreed upon then no amount of “facts” could change the course,we just have to ride the storm,even an ice-age would be turned to their favour!
50
Yes we’ve lost the war some time ago, and it’s only getting worse as they start instigating their plans to steal more money from our pockets without even a whimper from the public. Turnbull has just stacked the Climate Change Authority with five new board members so that means his old age term plan to collect more money via the fear of climate change is one step closer. Although the public are somewhat stupid, I don’t think they are so stupid to ignore an ice-age. But then again I might be overestimating the intelligence of modern mankind.
50
I agree with you Gavin-it’s about politics & money all the way down.
The truth / science means nothing to these people – they don’t undestand it anyway! The only way to win is through politics.
Senator Ted Cruz was absolutely brilliant!
Geoff W Sydney
60
I can agree that you may be right, Gav. But if so, there will eventually come a collapse that will take all the power brokers down with it. Failure is failure and failure cannot be explained away forever. Even Obama is showing shrinking support and he looks rather worried and haggard of late compared with when he took office. The man can no longer remember which story he told to whom. My fear is that not enough people will wake up while the fall can still be avoided or substantially mitigated.
But one way or another, the natural course of failure is downward to oblivion.
00
And yes, it’s all politics. I’ve been saying that for years. I even challenged David on what the result of his exposure of the current model’s flaws and the exposition of his new model would be. But I had to admit that having a successful model rather than a failed one will have persuasive power eventually.
00
I can always tell when something I said hits the
red, oops, the right nerve.Let the fight continue. 🙂
00
New Paper Reported in the Journal: Environmental Science and Technology again shows that the Global Climate Models have made wrong assumptions; the science is NOT SETTLED.
Global models at the moment assume total emissions of isoprene from all sources – trees, plants, plankton, the lot – of around 1.9 megatons per year. But, according to the new research, the newly discovered “abiotic” process releases as much as 3.5 megatons on its own – which “could explain the recent disagreements” between models and reality.
PM Turnbull and FM Bishop should not sign anything at COP21, Paris.
402
I had a look at that, and also Delingpole’s squirming over whether he was right to say
I don’t think Deller’s argument as stated was logically sound, as the presence of this source of isoprene may be newly discovered but it is not new under the sun. It’s always been there. He can’t show it is canceling global warming unless he shows the rate of isoprene production has increased in the last 14 years.
To figure that out you have to dig a bit deeper than Dellers did.
Here is the key quote from the paper:
They began the paper by assuming the relevant wavelengths were in the UVA band and are less than 400nm lambda. Here where they talk about the real world sample analysis, they imply the wavelengths which make the difference to isoprene formation are between 300nm and 400nm. UVB is officially between 290nm and 320nm, so 2/3 of the UVB band is inside the band “λ > 300 nm”.
During solar cycles the UVB band is the band that changes the most between activity minimum and activity maximum, here is the graph from NASA that shows it. In the band that changes the most, UVA is half of that, so solar activity also affects UVA. The most UV is during the solar cycle peak.
So more solar activity, more UVB+UVA, more isoprene production… and more cooling. Not warming. Oh.
Solar activity began rising around 1944 and remained relatively high until 1993, so isoprene should have been cooling the planet for those 50 years – the opposite of what actually happened. Isoprene should have been decreasing for the last 10 years as UVB/UVA decreased, making a warming effect, but we’ve had a flat line in temperature. Even if cooling started this year you would still have 60 years of historic warming that disproves a significant cooling effect.
Thanks to the ozone layer, very little UVB makes it down to the ocean, so perhaps isoprene does cool the planet a bit but the variance in the non-biotic source must be fairly small.
Solar activity does heat the planet due to ozone production and a decrease in cosmic ray flux. But the isoprene thing is a bit short of evidence to say it explains recent climate stasis.
30
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/more-doubts-re-agw-science-as-cop21.html
151
I like the illustration with the cloud-umbrellas!
It illustrates nicely the complexity of heat flow in and out of the earth’s atmosphere.
Your new modelling of the earths climate and the revised ‘architecture’ is a stunning break through!
Well done to David and Jo.
Geoff W Sydney
190
I agree and suggest the Australian Government should fund David’s exceptional work as it is a potential game changer.
Let’s use our taxes to get to the bottom of this CAGW settled science business and stop spending millions on obvious failures like Flannery, Karoly, Pitman, Turney etc.
It’s time to defund these failures now and switch the funding to David Evan’s research.
281
Thanks for the suggestion terrarious.
But pigs fly. The Australian Government has spent money to discredit us — negative funding. See this, or consider their funding of John Cook’s SkS site.
255
There may be some hope. Four new appointments to the “climate council”.
00
terrarious,
If the Australian government funded David’s work, the Australian government would own him, control him and essentially dictate to him. They would have bought David Evans.
I’ve never met David in person but just from what he says here on this blog I don’t think he’s a man who would allow himself to be bought. When someone hands you money they want something in return. And as David said, they want him discredited, meaning destroyed as an influence on anyone.
Maybe someday the government of Australia will recognize a good idea and pursue it themselves. Or maybe they won’t. But reality is that government is the problem, not the solution.
210
“The reality is that government is the problem, not the solution.”
Truer words were never spoken!
In 1918, H.L. Mencken wrote “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led
to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” I do not think anything much has changed in the hundred years since then.
170
Help! Is there going to be a cliffs notes version for ..now 10 parts of this?
40
I might add that there are direct feedbacks between CO2 and Albedo given that added CO2 changes the colour of the surface toward the green/yellow and encourages massive amounts of extra transpiration generating humid microclimates that both reflect SW and emit LW EMR. Given the amount of ocean the effect is probably small but it’s likely far from insignificant.
The other fact to bear in mind is that you probably can’t use the 1/4th cross section here. Cloudiness depends on solar incidence angle, pressure, including influences of lunar tidal effects on the atmosphere. Cloudiness follows the sun around the planet, it reflects solar input during the day, but retains solar energy at night. Clouds have a temporal dimension as well as a reflectivity, IE where and when it is cloudy is very relevant. High humidity atmospheres moderate temperature, a classic negative feedback. The tropics are warmer but LESS extreme than sub tropical climates.
100
Jo, I want to thank David and youreslf so much for putting so much effort into the detail review of the ‘models’.
The technical points you focus on and start to quantify are to my mind in so blindingly obviously part of the climate control system that it just beggars belief that they are not properly accounted for in the ‘models’. I use the term ‘models’ because they are not proper models at all but little more that curve fitting of a simplified mathematical form to a fineagled data set.
The fact that if you evaporate 1 kG of water that is enough to cool more than 2000 kG of nearby air starts to quantify the power of the evaporo-transpiration mechanism. If you then consider that 1 kG of wood contains more than 5,000 times that amount of energy starts to give you a sense of the sheer power of the biosphere to absorb energy. To create that kG of wood or other biomass takes many kG of water to be evaporated and the cooling/energy absorbing feedback of extra CO2 is even more compelling to explore. And then there is the effect on albedo of any increase in clouds.
How the hell this ludicrous CAGW fantasy got this far tells us an awful lot about how thin a veneer our apparently sophisticated age of reason has cast over our underlying, superstitious, fear driven psychology.
It also tells us that the likes of Lord Deben and the rest of the CAGW apparatchiks are little more than latter day shamans. Intellectual celibates selling indulgences to a spooked society.
320
Ursus
I just loved that piece.
The middle paragraph was so clear and instructive!!
Despite our education and sophistication it is amazing how most people
CAN BE SO EASILY MESMERISED AND LED meekly to their doom.
Power to those who lead the Sheeple.
KK
90
Wonderful description of Lord Deben UA.
1. CAGW apparatchik: check.
2. Latter day shaman: check.
3.Intellectual celibate: check.
Perhaps you can also share your thoughts with us on Tim Flannery and Naomi Klein. Keep up the good work.
170
Naomi Klein I just avoid because she is just too messed up to even want to take any notice of.
Tim Flam I just love… up to a point. I think Tim is a great communicator but he has the wrong education entirely to get into climate science and his thinking processes are just weird. He thought Lindy Chamberlain must have killed her baby Azaria because if the dingo had dunnit that would be really bad for dingoes, him being fond of dingoes and all. What can you say?
Tim Flam is better known for his utter flop predictions, who can forget all those empty dams. There are far, far worse than Tim Flam.
112
People (not you) are too hard on the Flim Flam man when they accuse him of stupidity.
The climate scam propelled Tim from being an unknown unloved voyeur of kangaroo fornication and connoisseur of prostitutes to a multi million dollar popular well known figure on television. Life’s good for Tim, and the largess of the public purse has made it an easy con.
40
My favorite news article that captures the essence of CAGW —
When it comes to climate change, we have to trust our scientists, because they know lots of big scary words
40
“surface warming reduces the area covered by less highly-reflective ice and snow,” Either drop “less” or replace by “more”?
Equation (1) is defined only for increases (four of them)–replace by “change”?
In your earlier posts, you deal only with ASR–absorbed solar radiation. But if some of it is reflected as albedo changes, it is no longer ASR. Have you subtly changed your focus in some way?
40
Thanks Lance! Dropped the “less”. The four “increases” in Eq. (1) are correct.
Note that ASR is the radiation (energy, heat) from the Sun after reflection (albedo). Incoming TSI is either reflected (~30%) or absorbed (~70%).
This post points out that EDA is substantially more important than the direct effect of changes in TSI, so it needs to be included. The alternative model being built up has delta-TSI and delta-EDA inputs (and of course delta-CO2). Yes, I could have left it at delta-ASR-sub-NF for estimating climate sensitivity to CO2 (the ECS), but in the third part of the series we look for what is the cause of the recent global warming and EDA is an obvious place to start.
Note also that the data and figures used above are very conservative. EDA could well be substantially more influential than the direct effect of changes in TSI, on the figures above.
211
For clarification, are you saying that the equation is NOT true for decreases? Doesn’t seem right to me.
00
Lance, it’s also true for decreases, bearing in mind that a decrease is a negative increase. The general rule is to define every change in a quantity as positive when the quantity increases. With albedo that can be counter-intuitive. If EDA increases (thus, ΔαE is positive) then the increase in ASR due to increasing EDA (ΔAEDA) is negative, as found in Eq. (5).
10
David what would happen if low level clouds since 1950 were reduced by 1% compared to the previous 65 years? Any estimates for the expected temp increase by 2015?
20
We’ll discuss issues like that in some detail later in the series. A few concepts we need to get through first.
130
FYI, 7 Oct. 2015 NewsBusters.org:
Press Ignoring Unsettling News For Global Warming’s True Believers
The person making this claim was a “climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office,” and has “six degrees in applied mathematics.”
What he found is that “the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.”
While some U.S. blogs have begun to relay the news (examples here, here and here), the nation’s establishment press is ignoring it.
Thus, Evans, unlike the “settled science” zombies pushing “global warming” aka “climate change” while shouting down and threatening to prosecute and imprison those who dare to doubt them, is willing to alter his position when he believes that the facts and science point in that direction.
60
handjive,
Links for here, here, and here please. 😉
Abe
00
Abe, at the original link, the links are at those ‘here’ words.
I considered creating the links, but random moderation looms … : )
10
Neville,
It might be way off the mark, but here is an estimate of temperature change for a decrease in cloud cover of 1.56% I made a few years ago: http://chipstero7.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/could-clouds-be-responsible-for-late.html
Another paper you could add to that list above is Eastman and Warren 2012.
40
As Dr. Roy Spencer notes (in his book):
“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/mcph1166/mcph1166.shtml
Summary and Discussion: Insolation at the equator under clear-sky conditions ranges between about 300 and 350 W/m-2. Using Reed’s [1977] flux formula, changes in cloudiness of only 10% would lead to changes in the net shortwave radiation at the sea surface of about 20 W/m-2. Changes in cloudiness of this magnitude are likely to occur on daily to monthly time scales, given that normally the skies are 60-70% cloud-covered owing to very active deep convection in the western equatorial Pacific.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/realclimate-admits-doubling-co2-could.html
RealClimate admits doubling CO2 could only heat the oceans 0.002ºK at most
RC: “There is an associated reduction in the difference between the 5 cm and the skin temperatures. The slope of the relationship is 0.002ºK (W/m2)-1. Of course the range of net infrared forcing caused by changing cloud conditions (~100W/m2) is much greater than that caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases (e.g. doubling pre-industrial CO2 levels will increase the net forcing by ~4W/m2), but the objective of this exercise was to demonstrate a relationship.”
100
Nev, I wouldn’t bet the farm on this, but if you really want a climate prediction and can’t wait for David to finish this series, you can have my own model’s prediction.
The earliest version of it was revealed on 8 November 2013 and was relied on an externally-modulated cloud albedo effect, which (based on the above post) may be similar to what David is heading towards in his blog series. But no doubt David’s will be more directly traceable to mainstream climate theory and be far more awesome.
00
Nice post David, thank you again.
60
I’d suggest that all things that throw shadows will control the climate by modulating the albedo. That could be something as simple as creeping ivy, kudzu, clover, Shasta daisies, mistletoe, and Spanish moss, or something as complex as a cloud or a fog. Some things throw disproportionate shadows – tall evergreen trees, for example.
Then there’s the whole unstudied problem of the Earth’s core spinning at a different rate than the surface. It surely is not the smooth billiard ball surface we see in science books, nor is the inner surface of the outer crust as smooth as our science illustrators suggest. What happens to volcanism when irregular surfaces stir up the viscous layer between? Do we get the Deccan traps, the lava floods of western North America, the Siberian Steps, and Old Faithful?
40
I wondered abou this, the earth’s surface is a fractal, the smaller the dimension, the larger the surface area
00
You also have the problem of the model treating the earth as a flat disk illuminated by a weak sun. The equator, where there is a lot of ocean, does not get that “average” 342 watts/meter^2 day.
RACookPE1978 was kind enough to put up on WUWT actual numbers for the “Direct Radiation Horizontal Surface”. That is radiation received on the equinox for solar radiation at each latitude at noon. HERE
The spread sheet gives 1150 W/m^2 at the equator at mid day on a clear day vs TOA for that day of 1353 W/m^2. This gives a much better idea of how much energy is ‘lost’ before it encounters the oceans at the Equator and is absorbed or reflected. In other words at that latitude at midday the atmosphere is pretty darn transparent especially when you consider the chemical reactions taking place in the atmosphere and the fact that some of the incoming radiation is absorbed and transformed in to ‘heat’ – kinetic energy.
Now add in the effect of clouds at the equator vs middle latitudes vs poles. No only does the amount of cloud cover varying matter but WHERE the clouds are matters.
On top of that add in our oceans are heated at depth by intermittent diurnal pulses of of SW radiation peaking at over 1000 w/m2. Because of the slow speed of non-radiative energy transport back to the surface, this has a cumulative effect on temperature that cannot be calculated by SB equations. In other words variation of the cloud cover in the tropics has a major influence.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/media/projects/SORCE/images/news_images/SORCEchart5.png
http://lh3.ggpht.com/vKooCTOZ6E2FIwnBb75W2dnxdGy6PxAI4LkVy5DadLlAEm0WMonp07ZwtRARgFLheHGmeFnszczeBLYPxzgo297mV1Cr3uqcS-s=s0
50
The TV show mixed C02 and methane. What was that all about? How do you prove CO2 warming by using methane? BOGUS.
These guys work in the desert all the time.
All they needed to do was to put 56 gas bags under the sun in winter say outside of Las Vegas, in a double blinded and randomized bag-placement study, 10 cubic meter gas bags are filled with, with 0 ppm CO2, 80 ppm, 120 ppm, 180 ppm, 240 ppm (pre industrialization) , 320 ppm, 360 ppm, 400 ppm, 440 ppm, 480 ppm, 520 ppm, 560 ppm, 600 ppm and 640 ppm.
Before filling each bag, a 100 kg weighed block of ice is placed. If it is a little light or a little heavy, no problem, it is weighed on a scale and weight recorded. All ice blocks are taken from a refrigerated truck.
Tanks filling the bags have gas mixture concentrations
that bag-fillers don’t know. Each tank has plenty of excess volume to fill the bags and to exhaust contaminating atmospheric air.
Temps are measured at initial filling, and at end of experiment.
End-of experiment, ice blocks are weighed –the weighers have no idea of the gas concentrations, and in-bag gas samples are taken. The ice-block weighers and the lab technicians don’t know what the in-bag CO2 concentrations are, they just record sample ID numbers.
A quadruplicate-sample experiment. Start at sunrise, end the experiment next sunrise, or if the ice allows, start at sunrise, and extend the experiment to 48 hours. Weigh remaining ice. It’s not that hard.
My hunch: You might have heavier ice blocks at 0 CO2 vs. 600 ppm CO2. Or maybe not. Between 280 and 400, I doubt in quadruplicate measurement you will find any statistically significant difference. Howzabout a government-paid-for experiment to find out?
71
That sounds like a fantastic experiment.
There is only one very big problem Old.
It is so easy and cheap to run it would not require a climate scientist to run it.
KK
41
Climate Scientists would find the range of numbers confusing. They’d have to invent new maths and run it all through a statistic filter to find the outliers, discard the wrong numbers, and homoginise the results. The results would show that CO2 has a significant impact and melts steel at 20 paces.
50
Getting a tad old now, and being an engineer, truth and integrity has always been paramount, or bad stuff happens. Science per sec has bothered my brain for untold decades. This latest run against facts and truth called CAGW is not even what could be called wrong, it is just plain stupid,political science, worse than what the Nazis invented. Thank you Jo and David your truth is spreading.
200
The difference between a scientist and an engineer:
A scientist has to convince others he is right.
An engineer has to be right.
210
Never heard that one before Len.
🙂
40
Nobel prize winning Physicist said something like “scientists start with guesses for a theory and then they should try and prove the guesses and if they can not then they need to start again”.
Engineers start with facts then develop formulae which can be used in designs of equipment and processes. Yes, engineers need to be right (technically correct)for public safety. Many places have registration of engineers under Acts which come under the criminal code (eg PE Act Qld)
130
Sorry too quick to post Physicist Richard Feynman
40
I’ve lost count of the times in a glider where there was spread out cloud(usually stratocumulus) and I went for the sunny spot where the ground would be warmer and kick off a thermal. Once had that go spectacularly wrong though. Went for the sunny hillsides with gentle breeze blowing up the hills and good looking cumulus and had a miserable run, landing out 11km short of the finish. The bloke I had caught went home direct under the high cirrus with not so good looking cumulus and had a good run. Spit!
The convection is generally more vigorous when there is an absence of altocu/altostratus or cirrus cover and the maximum temperature will usually be lower with cloud cover too.
50
Well that one time did not prove the rule Mike.
Cloud cover cools the ground!
10
Haven’t flown for a few years but hope to get back to flying my electric R/C model glider.
Get up under the edge of a cloud and watch it go.
KK
00
David,
I think you are penetrating weaknesses in the IPCC modeling. Keep it up.
What I’m kind of wondering is what you and Jo are doing about living in Perth. An Ozzie prof from Perth who moved to San Diego (35 years ago) told me the climates were very similar.
I moved from there because house price costs were too high. Even worse today: an 800 sq ft bungalow, 2 bedrooms 1 bath, 5 miles inland from the Pacific now costs over $600k. An eighth mile from the ocean, $1M. These were houses originally built for blue-collar families.
I think that SD has a great natural climate. I’m supposing the same is true for Perth. SD received, and still receives water from the lower Colorado River, upper Colorado is 1000 mi away, which is really crappy to drink, and is highly chlorinated.
Anyway, I would have stayed there if the housing costs had not skyrocketed. You can go out in winter in the day in a t-shirt and shorts, throw on a sweater at night (8-10 deg C).
Have you and Jo felt any need to move southward to Tasmania, or South Island NZ, because Perth is too warm? Or crossing the equator to British Columbia?
50
Thanks OF. We like it in Perth — Joanne likes the heat. I still enjoy the fact that in the 12 years I’ve lived here I have never seen a frost (there might have been a couple of light ones that cleared by the time I got up). Yes the climate is similar to Southern California, but WA is much less crowded.
180
Western Australian beaches are spectacular. Acres of white sand and clear turquoise blue water. California has nothing to compare (IMHO).
I have only visited California once od e a few days, so I can be corrected here, but the there seemed to be a lot of Sea Fog!
70
Yup. Last December/January’s beach holiday was a wonderful adventure. Flying across the Nullarbor in the BD-4 both ways, a few days at Augusta meeting new people and staying witha friend 600meters from North beach was just fantastic.
I spent 20 years in Perth from age 9 to 29 so maybe I’m biased.
00
On the other hand it’s real hard to have a good garden with that poor excuse for a soil you have there.
I hope there is never an earthquake there, the soil there would become quicksand and Perth would disappear forever.
00
As an ex Perth boy I recall an old mate of mine telling me years ago, after he spent some time in the US, that Perth has the weather that LA THINKS it has.
That said I do not miss the heat nor the bloody sand. I live in Tassie now and could have done without snow at the beach like we had this year and the very cold winter but then being able to ski after lunch an hour from home is nice and have some of the most gorgeous coastline you could hope for does compensate. The beer is excellent, the wine even better and the food, yum.
30
I’ll second that, Ursus. I did my time in the bloody heat and the dust and the flies of the Pilbara.
The problem is there is no way to escape the heat. Cold, on the other hand, only requires another layer of clothing.
I also did my time in the Yukon, and never tire of telling Taswegians that they do not understand what cold is.
Are you South, North, or Northwest, Ursus?
20
With what, about 35 million in all of Australia and about that same number of people in California alone, most of them preferring the Southern end of the state I’d say you’re a master of the understatement, David. WA is virtually empty by comparison.
And by the way, I’m a bit jealous about your less crowded environment. 😉 I’ll be driving about 20 miles of freeway shortly and then 20 miles back. There’ll be so many cars on the road with me that I have a hard time keeping a safe following distance.
10
I often compare Oz to the lower 48 states given they are both crudely rectangular. Given that, Perth is San Diego, and the next nearest city is Adelaide, positioned approximately where Houston is with not a lot in between.
Here’s a pic of Cottesloe Beach in Perth:
http://q-ec.bstatic.com/data/landmark/840×460/338/3385.jpg
20
Bulldust
The denizons of “T or C” may argue about what’s in that middle?
00
here’s a pic of bar beach in Newcastle
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=bar+beach+newcastle+nsw&biw=1680&bih=868&tbm=isch&imgil=2kiMryirm9vklM%253A%253ByFuFEnsSecVOnM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.mattlauder.com.au%25252Fframe_preview.php%25253Fim%2525253Dnew55.jpg%25252526code%2525253DNEW55%25252526image_size%2525253D%25252526category%2525253DNewcastle%25252C%2525252520NSW%25252526title%2525253DBar%2525252520Beach%25252526location%2525253DNewcastle%25252C%2525252520NSW%25252526starLoc%2525253DNSW-Middle%25252526prodId%2525253D920&source=iu&pf=m&fir=2kiMryirm9vklM%253A%252CyFuFEnsSecVOnM%252C_&usg=__ZvQciipjQu7HqQ2pxhl4drUEnyQ%3D&ved=0CEYQyjdqFQoTCOqD1P6MsMgCFUETpgodvGILwg&ei=Ke0UVqrLOMGmmAW8xa2QDA#imgrc=gLfajy_jjj365M%3A&usg=__ZvQciipjQu7HqQ2pxhl4drUEnyQ%3D
KK
00
And WA is not yet the left coast of Australia
20
I suppose it’s the Coriolis effect that takes care of that?
10
Going with this observation,
It appears the IPCC simply substituted albedo for CO2 to create a false harbinger of doom, look up and the answer was always in plain sight.
50
One should carefully distinguish between albedo and opacity.
Albedo (reflection) prevents energy being absorbed by denying it to the system altogether whereas opacity involves the amount of unreflected radiation that is then absorbed.
AGW proponents seem to suggest that opacity is primarily caused by radiative absorption by GHGs and that without GHGs an atmosphere would be perfectly transparent to radiation.
In fact, atmospheres acquire the vast bulk of their energy content from conduction at, and convection from, the irradiated surface.
Opacity in the climate context is any form of resistance to the transmission of radiation. Therefore the time taken in the processes of conduction and convection results in atmospheric opacity with no radiative component necessary at all.
Such atmospheric opacity from conduction and convection appears to be an alien concept for AGW proponents.
The distinction between albedo and opacity feeds into David’s hypothesis because changes in albedo within our relatively transparent atmosphere will primarily affect the amount of energy reaching the surface so that surface warming can occur if albedo is reduced.
In contrast, non condensing GHGs do not significantly affect albedo but they do affect opacity by absorbing energy at a point off the surface.
It is the fact that they absorb energy off the surface that causes them to alter lapse rate slopes and convection rather than altering the average global surface temperature.
The altering of lapse rate slopes with consequent convective adjustments is what enables the system to remain stable despite changes in radiative capability within the atmosphere.
Furthermore, those convective adjustments allow energy flows to and fro between multiple emission layers (as per David’s concept of radiative ‘pipes’) without needing to alter average global surface temperatures.
1215
I think that you are making important points here Stephen. However they need clarification.
Why is the lapse rate 7C/km and not 9.8C/km? That needs clarification or explanation>
20
Peter,
The Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate (DALR) is set by mass and gravity at about 9.8C/km and follows the gravity induced decline in density with height. Mass density is critical because the denser the mass at the surface the larger the proportion of radiative energy passing through that can be taken up by conduction and convection.
In order for an atmosphere to be retained it is essential for all actual lapse rate slopes throughout an atmosphere to average out to the DALR set by mass and gravity. If that does not happen then radiative balance will be lost and the atmosphere either drifts off into space or falls to the ground.
In reality, wherever an atmosphere is present, stability has been acquired and maintained via the process of hydrostatic balance whereby the upward pressure gradient force provided by kinetic energy at the surface balances with the downward force of gravity.
If any radiative imbalances then arise there will be convective changes that neutralise the thermal effect of those imbalances and it all happens off the surface within the vertical columns of rising and falling air masses.
The average lapse rate in our Troposphere is around 7C/km, largely due to water vapour.
In the stratosphere the lapse rate is reversed as a result of direct absorption of solar radiation by the ozone layer, in the mesosphere it reverses again and there is yet another reversal in the thermosphere.
I am quite sure that if ever we were able to average out the global lapse rate profiles from every point on the surface to the boundary with space then the entire system would produce a figure around 9.8C/km but with variations around that average figure as imbalances arise and are countered by convective adjustments.
The energy required at the surface to maintain hydrostatic balance cannot be included in the S-B equation. That ‘surplus’ kinetic energy is locked into convective overturning for as long as there is convecting atmospheric mass suspended off the surface against the force of gravity.
The S-B equation assumes that there is no opacity arising from conduction or convection at the surface interfering with the radiative flows in and out. As soon as conduction and convection begin then that causes radiative opacity and the surface temperature rises above S-B.
The lapse rate slope marks the changing balance between photon emission and collisional activity as one moves vertically through the mass of an atmosphere. That changing balance is directly proportionate to density.
1115
Thanks Stephen,
I appreciate your reply.
It all seems a bit convoluted. Reality does not match Theory exactly. A problem for skeptics also!
Could we focus on this;
It is reasonable to propose that water vapour is important in the Troposphere, because of convection and latent heat.
Has it been shown that the latent heat of water reduces the lapse rate to 7C theoretically? That would match observations.
30
Peter,
All the radiative constituents in the troposphere taken together reduce the lapse rate slope at low levels and increase it at upper levels. In so far as the average lapse rate in the troposphere does not average out to 9.8C/km then the difference is compensated for at higher levels where the lapse rate slop is actually revered.
Reality does match that description as far as I can see.
714
reversed, not revered 🙂
10
Peter, the reduction in lapse rate by water vapour is due to condensation in cloud. The latent heat of condensation causes the temperature to fall more slowly as an air parcel ascends with water vapour condensing in it.
20
Peter, maybe I can explain a little more simply.
Imagine an atmosphere which comes instantly into being where every molecule has the same total energy. Kinetic energy + Potential energy = Constant
So as the height potential energy (mgh) rises the kinetic energy must fall to compensate. You get a lapse rate of 9.8 C per km.
Now suppose ww let the sunshine in and heat the bottom layer, conduction and convection allows kinetic energy to flow from hot to cold (bottom to top of the atmosphere) this energy adds to the kinetic component of the atmosphere but not to the potential energy component (well it does eventually but while energy is flowing the KE dominates), this means that while thermal energy is flowing up through the atmosphere, total energy KE + PE increases with height, because of the energy moving from bottom to top is adding to the KE component at any given level without immediately changing the molecules height, the lapse rate is reduced from the theoretical (it’s warmer at the top than we expect if no energy was flowing reducing the difference between that level and the ground).
Put another way, KE (heat) can flow, PE doesn’t
33
Steven,
I am also having problems with the lapse rate.
The conventional explanation is that LR drops from -9.8DegC/km to -6.5DegC/km due to the condensation of water vapour – the energy so released then makes the air hotter than it otherwise would be.
I think one missing element is that there is also absorption of IR from the Surface by the GHGs – the relative strengths on average are Water Vapour condensation 3, absorption of surface IR 1. The absorption of IR is most pronounced low down in the atmosphere.
There is another consideration: in the real world there is a very great difference in evaporation rates, and also a very great difference in air humidity from place to place. And this should mean a very great difference in Lapse Rate from place to place, but we don’t see that at all.
Finally, the stratospheric lapse rate.
1. Why is the Tropopause such a sharp inflection point in the 50% of the planet directly below the sun?
2. The greatest absorption of sunlight energy by Ozone will be at the highest altitudes, much less at lower altitudes, but the lapse rate seems to sharpen as the tropopause is approached from above. Why is that?
11
Colin:
i) Absorption of IR from the surface by GHGs does distort the lapse rate. All radiative material in the atmosphere does.
ii) Humidity usually builds up over large areas when convection is inhibited by an inversion layer above and the region so affected then has a fairly uniform lapse rate.
iii) I understood that above the tropopause there is little further temperature change for a certain distance and then as one goes beyond that distance the temperature starts to increase. Accordingly, I do not understand your query about variable ‘sharpness’ at the tropopause.
211
A useful chart of atmospheric temperature as you go from ground to space.
http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/louviere/Images/profile.gif
The IR emissions for CO2 and Ozone in the Stratosphere and a bit of the H2o emmisions in the upper troposphere.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/stratospheric_cooling.jpg
10
Thanks for these, Gai
Much more accurate temperature profiles can be gained by plotting the weather balloon data from this amazing site http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html where the twice daily balloon data is saved for sites which cover the planet.
00
Stephen,
Thanks for your response.
12hourly Radiosonde data for many parts of the planet is archived at http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html
When I plotted some of these out, I found that:
1. The American Standard Atmosphere is UNREPRESENTATIVE of the planet. Over 50% of the planet has a profile with a sharp inflection point Tropopause at 15km, a single altitude at which the -6.5DegC Troposphere stops and becomes the ~ +4DegC Stratosphere.
2. The latitude band where this sort of Tropopause is evident is roughly the 60 degree band centred on the Sun’s declination (the latitude at which the noonday sun is directly overhead).
3. That means that latitudes between 10 and 50 have a sharp inflection point in summer, but an extended several km deep Tropopause in winter.
I don’t think that the standard explanation (cessation of convection, absorption by Ozone)for the Tropopause explains the sharp inflection point. It may be coincidence, but as Steve McIntyre noted several years ago, the majority of emissions to Space from CO2 (in the 630 to 710 wavenumber band) are coming from 15km and above.
01
Off topic, but this is from their ABC.
IT JUST NEVER ENDS. Now climate change causes mental health issues….
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/drawingroom/climate-change-and-mental-health/6828764
Extreme weather events and climate change are having an increasing impact on mental health.
Research indicates that the less politicians agree on responses to climate change, the more people worry about future impacts.
Professor Ian Hickie is Director of the Brain & Mind Institute, which is leading a lot of the research.
And what of the climate scientists who are faced with the facts of climate change on a daily basis?
Kevin Walsh and Ailie Gallant have both taken part in the Is This How You Feel? project. A global collaboration documenting the emotional responses of climate scientists.
They join Patricia Karvelas in The Drawing Room.
Also see this from early August:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnafternoons/scientists-say-how-they-27feel27-about-climate-change/6698622
41
Natural climate change is indeed causing mental health issues among the CAGWers !
80
Quite so.
A recent Press Council ruling came down to argument over two words.
“The Australian Press Council has considered a complaint by Andrew Robertson about an opinion article by Tim Blair in The Daily Telegraph on 6 June 2011, headed Simple way to spit on the dummies.
Mr Robertson complained that the concluding section of the article implied climate scientists deserved the abuse and death threats they were allegedly receiving by email and, by excusing those emails, incited violent action against the scientists.
Well, that’s not the message we got from their climate rap. ‘Perhaps,’ replied [a named reader], ‘they shouldn’t call people motherf…ers if they don’t want to fight.’
Quite so.
50
The IPCC’s numbers come from averaging nearly two dozen individual models produced by institutions including the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), the U.K.’s Met Office, and more.
All of these models have features in common, but they’re constructed differently — and all of them leave some potentially important climate processes out entirely.
The problem is that warming causes all sorts of changes — in the amount of ice in the Arctic, in the kind of vegetation on land, in ocean currents, in permafrost and cloud cover and more — that in turn can either cause more warming, or cool things off.
To model the climate accurately, you have to account for all of these factors.
Unfortunately, says James Hurrell, who led the NCAR’s most recent effort to upgrade its own climate model, you can’t.
“Sometimes you don’t include processes simply because you don’t understand them well enough,” he says.
“Sometimes it’s because they haven’t even been discovered yet.”
A good example of the former, says Dixon, is the global carbon cycle — the complex interchange of carbon between oceans, atmosphere, and biosphere.
> Other important phenomena, such as changes in clouds, are still too complex to model accurately.
“We can’t simulate individual cumulus clouds,” says Dixon, because they’re much smaller than the 200-kilometer grid boxes that make up climate models’ representation of the world.
The same applies to aerosols — tiny particles, including natural dust and manmade soot — that float around in the atmosphere and can cool or warm the planet, depending on their size and composition. (e360.yale.edu)
20
Cosmic ray theory seems solid to me. All Backed up by contolled lab tests that show they seed cloud formation. With the sun causing changes to amount of cosmic rays, amount of cloud cover then varies, hence surface temps change. Cloud changes are clearly observable from jet stream trails and even some ship trails across the sea.. Coz they often burn the dirtiest coal, this seeds cloud formation too, but hey, that would be manmade climate change thats NOT from CO2. How do models know the difference. So it Al comes back to the obvious. …its the sun…stupid.
20
The main problem with the cosmic ray idea is that there is no shortage of condensation nuclei in the first place so that adding more makes little difference.
Then there is the issue that more clouds seems to be a consequence of wavier jet stream tracks so that there is more air mass mixing yet the number of condensation nuclei has no relevance to that.
41
How so, otherwise clouds would be full coverage. I say you are guessing at when this reaction occurs. If we understood it as well as we dew point then great. Otherwise itsmjust naynaying. Eg not all plane or ships leave trails. It takes a pre-condition.
10
Good point! In the troposphere most contrails are formed when cold sinned aircraft are heated by the compressed air laminar flow, eventually to recovery temperature. Post aircraft, the expanding, lost heat, atmosphere causes WV to condense to visible.
Stratospheric with no WV, it is engine produced WV plus atmospheric ice cooling the engine in the bypass. Post aircraft, all is condensing into visible ice!
All the best! -Will-
03
Jo
In his book The Great Global Warming Blunder Roy Spencer discusses this question.He points out that if there are changes to clouds which affect the albedo they could be as a feedback or could (in effect) be a forcing if they have changed for some other reason. Clearly it is difficult to distinguish and unless we can the effect of CO2 through feedbacks is unknowable. He had a recent posting on his web site based on preliminary satellite data which indicated a fall in humidity in the upper troposphere due to warming might result in a negative water vapour feedback.
Dont you love settled science!
Roger
50
Conventional climate science probably does have an excessive (blinkered) focus on CO2, and certainly has some poor physics approximations (especially for clouds) but I still don’t think it has the mathematical, architectural or conceptual flaws being claimed here. If the work being described here is to be taken seriously by the mainstream then those claims of flaws need to be watertight (to me they are leaking like sieves) or dropped, otherwise they risk a loss of credibility (or just outright dismissal) of the whole thing.
127
Sure Mikky. Typical vague sneering we’ve come to expect from you.
154
Some do, some don’t, it’s not up to David to correct thw work of others, rather once David has published then the IPCC and model authors aught to eliminate or repair any models that have any of the discussed flaws. There’s no law that says we have to do their work for them
110
what a dumb comment. You expect someone to drop a theory based on your unsupported assertions?
IMO if this theory is correct it will be a long time before it overcomes its deficiencies. As with any new idea, right or wrong, due consideration is given to those that present themselves with clarity and brevity and which is seen by people who understand it.
120
“Probably”, eh? Understatement of the century right there ^^. At least David’s theory is actually supported by real-world measurements. The warmists, on the other hand, have not based their claims upon real-world measurements as they are pretending to have done. Instead they have based their claims on the fanciful, un-reality checked output of their computerised models which bear no relationship to the laws of physics and chemistry or to the true results of empirical observation either.
You mean taken seriously not by the the ‘mainstream’, but by politically subservient government agencies like NASA, NOAA and the IPCC?
100
The IPCC and the UN have NEVER been concerned with the actual climate. The only concern has been trying to cobble something together so they can blame industrial nations and therefore tax them.
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change official definition:
The IPCC mandate is similar:
So it never was about understanding the climate. It was really about ‘options for mitigation and adaptation. ‘ and this is ‘The Science’ wanted by the Globalists like the UN, the World Bank, and the WTO.
The IPCC’s ROLE
So there it is again. ONLY “human-induced climate change” is of interest and that is why you see very little work done on natural climate change.
Worse it is the custom and practice of the IPCC for all of its Reports to be amended to agree with the political summaries. The facts are as follows.
The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is agreed “line by line” by politicians and/or representatives of politicians, and it is then published. After that the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports are amended to agree with the SPM. This became IPCC custom and practice of the IPCC when prior to its Second Report the then IPCC Chairman, John Houghton, decreed,
“We can rely on the Authors to ensure the Report agrees with the Summary.”
This was done and has been the normal IPCC procedure since then making the IPCC reports nothing more than political propaganda used to scare the Sheeple into compliance with the wishes of the Globalists.
ALSO the ClimAstrologists know there models are useless:
40
I remember a year or so ago some greens were proposing building special ships to travel round the world and blow water droplets up into the atmosphere to cut the amount of sunlight reaching the surface.
20
They were probably heavily invested in Ski Resorts……or just a bit silly.
10
For some reason the word ‘delusional’ also comes to mind. 😉
Abe
20
For those interested, I dug this out of my notes. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2191431/Could-man-clouds-halt-global-warming-reflecting-sunlight-Scientist-urges-experiments-using-ships-shoot-seawater-sky.html And that is just one of them.
10
First a question. Have any serious studies been conducted into the effect of high flying aircraft? Two effects I can think of 1) mixing of the air up to 10,000 m. 2) vapour trails at that height. I was recently in Amsterdam standing looking up in the middle of the day and the sky was solidly criss-crossed with water vapour trails from aircraft… must have some impact on albedo.
During the same trip we flew over the Swiss Alps and I observed and photographed the most interesting phenomenon. The cloud cover at the time was layered at I guessed 1,500 to 2,500 m. We were at the usual 10,000 m. What I saw was a perfect circle in the cloud layer which had to be 20 to 30 km in diameter. I am guessing it was because the CERN accelerator was directly underneath. We were not too far from Geneva. If you would like some of these photos Jo, send me an email that gives instructions on how to get them to you.
James
[Email coming Thanks – Jo]
40
Incidentally I was astounded at the number of aircraft taking off and landing at Heathrow, Venice and Amsterdam. A really interesting web site to see this is;
http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KJFK
and zoom out. Enjoy.
10
They are called “hole punch clouds”. Perfectly normal, but quite spectacular.
10
The photos are here. It doesn’t look like a “hole punch cloud” to me.
https://ardingthoughts.wordpress.com/
00
After 9-11 US airspace had no aitcraft for 3 days and this was claimed to have a measurable impact on temperature but these claims were later challenged.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.html
00
“The IPCC includes changes in sunlight (TSI), so it does not make sense to ignore the larger and more powerful changes in the Earth’s albedo (fraction of sunlight that is reflected). Both contribute to the amount of sunlight heating the surface, or “absorbed solar radiation” (ASR).”
David
What about the albedo of surface of oceans, which covers 70% or so of planet’s surface?
Any measurements, etc?
Thanks
Alice
10
Alice, in this post and what follows in the series we are only concerned with albedo as a whole, without knowing what part of the albedo is changing. Clouds are the biggest factor in albedo, then ice, but it could be oceans and deserts, or airborne reflectants such as dust or something biological.
50
At some point here David’s theories, which one presumes hindcast better than the drivel the IPCC has fed us, will make forecasts. Science will then be done, slowly, over many years as conditions do or do not validate the null hypothesis.
One way the public imagination has been captured in the past is a high profile wager on the outcome. More punters than pedagogues in our midst, I suppose. The floor is open for proposals on the bettors & the stake!
30
Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ Alex S. Gaddes (1990) pp55.
“Global Warming or Cooling?
How does the cooling effect of atmospheric dust compare with the warming effect of excess carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere by man?
J. Gribbin (Ref. No. 12) quotes R. Bryson as mentioning “sharp changes” within 17 years, in records revealed by the study of pollens. According to Bryson the results of these studies also show, “…..that it is possible to go from an inter-glacial situation, like the present, to full glacial conditions in less than 100 years….”
Dust a Prime Cause
According to Gribbin, Bryson agrees with other climatologists, that volcanic dust has been a prime cause of past changes, but is convinced that man-made dust is now producing a cooling trend “…..as significant as any recorded effect of volcanic dust…..”
Apparently Bryson, at the time of Gribbin’s writing this, was not particularly keen on the idea that variation in solar output is responsible for a major part of the cooling trend, which has been in evidence, world- wide, since the 1940’s.
Professor Bryson also correlated the vapor-trails of jet planes with a loss of sunlight and a marked reduction in the euphotic zone of the oceans, a reduction of nutrients and a delay in warming, which produces less plankton at a later time in the year, than would otherwise be the case.
According to Gribbin, the delayed and decreased bloom of zooplankton has been observed since 1950, selectively, under the jet route, in accord with Bryson’s figures.
Delicate Balance
These observations attributed to R. Bryson, serve to point out the state of extremely delicate balance in which Earth’s heat budget is poised.
There has been a lot about volcanic and man-made dust in the relevant literature concerning the climate/weather problem, yet barely any attention paid to another important source of dust.
However, thanks to Sherwood B. Idso (Ref. No. 13) that other source has been exhaustively investigated and fully elaborated on in the above paper. This source is wind-blown dust.
Idso leaves nothing to doubt as to the significance of wind-blown dust, among factors affecting the ability of the atmosphere to transmit sunlight. He also quantifies the enormous dimensions of the great desert dust storms the world over.
Reflecting on the obvious implications exposed by his paper, it seems rather strange, that of all the material to come to my notice so far, this is the only singular treatment of this important subject.
Deserts Expanding
Given that the deserts of the world are expanding, and have continued to do so since the Romans of Augustus Caesar’s reign produced wheat over almost all the northern half of the Sahara Desert, this wind-blown desert dust, must, even if all other factors remain stable(which they have not,) exert a considerable negative impact on the Earth’s heat budget.
It follows that man’s activities must be aiding the intensification of the dust effect throughout Earth’s atmosphere (see Ref. No. 12,) by the mind-boggling rate of spread, of broad-acre methods of agriculture. This, largely in areas of fragile soil cover, which once the delicate root system is destroyed by ploughing, is ripe for wholesale transportation by the wind.
This degradation of the soil can turn marginal land into desert, practically overnight, hastening the spread of the desert landscape before man’s apathetic eyes.
Yet another deadly component of our modern agricultural methods is indiscriminate and widely practiced de-forestation.
Albedo: A Potent Threat
These factors, both individually and collectively, contribute to yet another well known factor, known as Albedo. This simply means reflectivity, reflecting rather than absorbing the Sun’s rays. Albedo constitutes a very potent threat to Earth’s heat budget, again on the negative, or debit side.
If, as Bryson records, it has happened in the past that conditions have gone from an inter-glacial stage like the present, to full glacial conditions in less than 100 years, it becomes obvious that if (excluding man’s activities other than the production of carbon dioxide) any tendency towards global cooling is in evidence, such as a short-fall in solar output and/or expanding deserts,(including their attendant wind-blown dust) or the dust from explosive volcanoes; and man’s negative activities are added to the equation, it becomes very likely that there will be a continuation of the cooling which began in the 1940’s, in spite of the added factor of excess carbon dioxide…..”
31
The basic effects of clouds should be apparent to anyone who is reasonably observant (far too few perhaps). Unfortunately, what you can observe is all local and so the overall effect on climate isn’t as obvious as you might expect. This part of David’s exposition surprised me because although it’s obvious to me that clouds have a very noticeable effect on temperature, I had never considered clouds on a global scale. But it makes perfect sense that they are a major driver of climate.
80
Roy don’t know if you’ve seen the documentary The Cloud Mystery that was made using the scientific method that took 10 years to make.
Here’s a youtube link for you or anyone that’s interested, funny how you made those observations after all those years of flying. 🙂
50
Yoni,
It didn’t even take flying, just being observant. And I missed the larger connection, pilot training or not. 🙁
00
ABC, Science Online, 06 Oct 2000
Clouds won’t counter global warming
“Don’t count on clouds to come and rescue us from global warming, says a NASA researcher, who claims that the minimum amount of warming predicted by scientists should be revised upwards by half a degree Celsius.”
~ ~ ~
ABC, Jan 1 2014: Study finds link between cloud changes and global warming
ABC radio interview: Climate study paints even uglier picture of the future
Chief investigator Professor Steven Sherwood says, “We found that there’s a, what we call, feedback operating with clouds.”
~ ~ ~
IPCC’s Latest Super-Flop: Scientists Say Aerosol Impact On Clouds “Almost Double That Estimated in Latest IPCC Report”
(notrickszone, Aug, 2014)
~ ~ ~
Guardian, Thursday 23 April 2015: Changes in water vapor and clouds are amplifying global warming
A very new paper currently in press shines light on climate feedbacks and the balance of energy flows to and from the Earth. The paper was published by Kevin Trenberth, Yongxin Zhang, John Fasullo, and Shoichi Taguchi.
In this study, the authors ask and answer a number of challenging questions.
40
ABC Radio Interview, quote:
STEVEN SHERWOOD: Well there’s a lot of unanswered questions surrounding this mechanism, what controls the depth of the storms that I was talking about.
And in particular, we don’t know what you have to put into a climate model, what equations you have to put in, to get it to do the right thing.
So I think one of the things that I would like to work on is to try to make that link, which we can’t currently make.
. . .
I’m convinced.
Where do I pay my carbon(sic) tax, Malcolm?
Matter of fact, I’m so convinced I’ll pay it twice!
50
handjive ….”And in particular, we don’t know what you have to put into a climate model, what equations you have to put in, to get it to do the right thing.”
Interpretation .. ” We have put in the appropriate equations into the model but it told us CO2 was not important. So now we don’t know what equations to put in so it makes CO2 look important”
60
The latest on Svensmark’s cloud-solar-amplifier
By Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning
[German text translated/edited by P Gosselin]
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.0AHLKuDo.dpuf
00
The contrails from planes flying at night are reckoned to trap outgoing heat radiation.
While daytime contrails apparently ‘offset their heat-trapping effect by reflecting incoming sunlight.’
20
One doesn’t hear much about Henrik Svensmark’s ideas on cloud formation these days, but I thought it was a far superior hypothesis to the Lorenz one and you have put some very plausible mathematics to it. Good work.
60
Meanwhile, in Canberra, the politicians follow their UN based leaders and pretend that the voters are right behind them.
60
There is, or has been, a quite vigorous analysis of the Evan’s posts on Lucia’s Blackboard:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2015/questions-to-david-evans-what-do-you-mean-about-partial-derivatives/
Of course, as with the comments on Bishop hill, I wish the commenters had posted here. That would actually make it simpler to follow the various threads. Lucia’s comments are both pointed and unsympathetic, but well worth reading
[ianl888, please see my reply to this question at comment 40.1.1.2.
We have put up a blog post on this: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/lucia-has-a-bad-day-with-partial-derivatives/
David E.]
10
Why should David have to go to Lucia’s Blackboard to Answer her “Questions to David Evans?”
If Lucia wants actual answers she should come here to ask those questions. That she does not means she want to rant not have a serious scientific discussion It means she is afraid of David. That is why she wants to be in control of the Home ground.
40
Perhaps, but I doubt it
One of the unsympathetic commenters on LB is one Nick Stokes. Whether one agrees with him or not (and 95% of the time I don’t), he has been head-to-head with McIntyre on CA countless times – not cowardly, even when wrong
I really can’t understand the motive for not commenting here, and I include the Bishop Hill posters, but I suspect some sort of inverted snobbery, wherein the Jo Nova website is regarded as sort of equivalent to the Yellow Press (NOTE: I don’t think that so there’s no point in straw-manning me) and appearing here is somehow demeaning
Evans is actually dealing with this issue in a very astute way – publishing the paper in a reputable journal with peer review. This is fine, as the various unsympathetic commentators can then let loose without the snobby “ickiness”
30
ian8888
I agree it is a form of snobbery or just plain lack of courtesy.
But the more I read in the comments sections on various posts I think there are some HUGE egos involved, with some people. This came out loud a clear with David’s earlier posts on his “notch theory” and it is starting to come out again but thankfully it is mostly on other sites, and I hope they stay there.
I’m with Geoffrey Williams above who says the solution to this is political but the politicians have to be given the basic scientific argument to beat “97%” rubbish. I think David and Jo are doing this exactly the right way and I hope they don’t get diverted from their course of action.
40
I don’t disagree with the way they are going about it, but I want to see real scientific head-to-head argument (very rare in the public domain) and the push-back from critiques deliberately limited to other sites (akin to shadow boxing) is peculiarly irritating
40
The main thing is that they are all talking.
Blogs are tribal in nature and people don’t travel much beyond their comfort zone.
00
“Whatever controls clouds controls the climate”
I want to make it completely clear that it isn’t me. I have no control over the clouds at all. So don’t blame me.
50
note former BBC CAGW reporter, Richard Black, uses a ***CLOUD paper as an example:
7 Oct: Climate Change News: Richard Black: There is a point to BBC Editorial Guidelines after all
BBC apology after complaints about irreverent radio show generated cheering in climate-sceptic circles, but ultimately own goal for backers
Good news in the post today: a letter from BBC Audience Services ‘fessing up on the appalling Radio Four programme What’s the Point of the Met Office, broadcast on 5 August…
Parliamentary interviewees were selected from the sparse ranks of climate sceptics and then given an easy ride, mistruths were recited as Gospel, other sceptical voices were given false credibility as they were introduced, and mistakes attributed to the Met Office which it didn’t make. Balance was there none…
And for the first (and, I hope, the last) time since leaving the BBC I submitted a complaint through the former channels, in addition to asking publicly What’s the Point of the BBC Editorial Guidelines…
‘Unfortunate and uncharacteristic’
Mine wasn’t the only complaint, and this morning’s reply was very welcome…
Over the last decade or so it’s progressively become more difficult for scientists denying man-made climate change to publish papers in proper climate science journals, simply because a lack of quality in such papers…
***One example is the 2011 paper on the role of clouds published in Remote Sensing journal, which led to the editor’s resignation…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/10/07/there-is-a-point-to-bbc-editorial-guidelines-after-all/
(Richard Black is former BBC Environment Correspondent and now Director of the Energy and Climare Intelligence Unit)
20
Engineering science demonstrates CO2 has no significant effect on climate. Identification of the two factors that do cause reported average global temperature change (sunspot number is the only independent variable) are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com (now with 5-year running-average smoothing of measured average global temperature (AGT), the near-perfect explanation of AGT since before 1900; R^2 = 0.97+).
40
New paper finds cosmic rays affect atmosphere via multiple mechanisms, not just clouds
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/100201/meta
Focus on high energy particles and atmospheric processes
R Giles Harrison1, Keri Nicoll1, Yukihiro Takahashi2 and Yoav Yair3
Published 6 October 2015
20
(please excuse this repost from an older inactive thread)
Look, I think there are many, many things wrong with nearly all aspects of climate science.
However, I think that David needs to address the critiques of his work over at Lucia’s “The Blackboard”
This a serious, honest site and is certainly not supporting the consensus.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2015/questions-to-david-evans-what-do-you-mean-about-partial-derivatives/
[We have put up a blog post on this: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/lucia-has-a-bad-day-with-partial-derivatives/
David E.]
10
WHY?
If they have questions they can come here. It is not like they have to walk across town or fly to another continent to talk to Dr Evans
So WHY should Dr Evans run all over the internet to answer questions at WUWT, Lucia’s Blackboard, Musings of the Chiefio, Bishophill, Roy Spencer’s Blog…..
He pick HERE to present his work and HERE to answer questions.
What’s the matter is Lucia to scared to come here and speak for herself?
80
I agree; Lucia especially seems not to have bothered reading here! Most She got from Bishophill, where all is about the GCM’s not about David’s writing! If the partials are used improperly in the basics, just imagine what the GCMs are like. No do not even try spaghetti code everywhere, patches, and adds everywhere with no testing! Tweek and run it again!
70
You made me remember this very good comment at WUWT:
So this engineer finds the GCMs the cobbled up mess you do.
90
Exactly Will.
Sadly Lucia obviously hasn’t read the series and has taken post 4 out of context. Near the top of her post she says:
As readers here will know, this series of blog posts is about basic climate models, the application of “basic physics”. The importance of this is described in post 1, and the conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3. The partial derivative problem is in post 4.
The post and conversation at Lucia’s flows from there, unfortunately, so the response from me would merely be a lot tiresome “read the posts” comments, just like it was at BishopHill. If they wish to discus it with me they know where I am. Time is too short to chase all over the web.
I know Lucia’s is a serious, honest and skeptical site, having often read stuff there. But I wish people would read, instead of skipping the reading and simply assuming everyone else is ignorant and foolish, then criticizing what they didn’t read. There was some pretty bad cases of that last year too, when the notch-delay theory was introduced.
[We have put up a blog post on this: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/lucia-has-a-bad-day-with-partial-derivatives/
David E.]
70
David,
I have a great deal of respect for you and Jo. This blog and the posts at it have helped reasonable people make a valid perception of the climate obsessed consensus. I believe I understand your position but also believe that more communication- even if only an invitation to read your work in context- is better than none.
32
Not reading the post just the comments is a normal operating procedure especially when the post is long and difficult. The tactic is to read what the others say. I have been waiting to see what the alarmists say about this series of posts and seems that they just ignore it.
The claim that all IPCC’s models follow the basic model need much more elaboration and references.
Models are simplifications of reality that should behave like reality. The difficulty is in selecting factors that have an impact and leaving out the ones that does not. I would like to see much more evidence about this, both empirical and theoretical.
Taking a time step in a model is realized by calculating the next values for the grid cell. Computers typically do that one value at the time. The error of doing so is acceptable if the sizes of the cell and time time step are small. In climate models they are not, but that is just an impression not science.
00
Is what you are saying? ‘There is no necessary convergence to any value in these models? That is much like cutting off ‘some’ from the long leg of the table four (4) times, and announcing it is still to short! 😉
00
Thank you David,
from my own work, I agree, atmospheric water (H2O) in all its forms is the only significant moderator of insolation/temperature. I also agree that visible clouds, observable to all serfs, can be the downfall, of the watermelon gas bourgeois! Your expression of “whatever-controls-clouds” is also right on! Please, please push to make the watermelons admit in all their academic scientific glory, that they have no clue as to that elusive “whatever”.
Some of your math is confusing to me, but so are Raccoons! Perhaps some of my hard learned experience of atmospheric thermal flux, its generation and transmission, and its measurement, may be helpful. I offer what I have, with no claim of knowledge!
All the best! -will-
12
Thank you Jo, for another dose of sanity. Good things often come out of WA.
70
On clouds, in correspondence with Lord Monckton, he had co-authored a paper arguing that statistically lower cloud coverage produced the observed warming, but I have seen no reference to this paper. There is also the possibility that there is a feedback that warming produces less cloud cover, not in a runaway but just shifting the equilibrium point slightly. Now that any change has stopped and in hindsight is still minute, comparable in fact to traditional measurement errors, the whole argument of rapid warming is suspect in that even the tiny change observed is not continuing, may have been an artifact of historical measurement methods or even fabricated or assisted by homogenization which presumed the answer. Whichever, any warming is clearly not significant or continuing. You would think that was game over.
As for ‘Climate Change’ without ‘Global Warming’, how does that happen? How does CO2 produce Climate Change. No one has bothered to explain the simple physics.
100
TdeF,
Lord Monckton has a point.
Australia is currently in the grip of a planet encompassing, 5 year Dry Period – made up of various Solar induced Orbital ‘Dry’ Cycles.
These ‘Dry’ Cycles were identified and forecast exactly by Alex S. Gaddes in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990.)
These ‘Dry’ Cycles appear to be caused by something Gaddes dubbed the ‘X Factor’ – a phenomenon originating in the Sun and retarding cloud and water vapor production in the upper atmosphere. Thus we are now observing drastically less cloud and precipitation around the world. ( responsible for the ‘superficial’ warming.)
Gaddes did not find the exact nature and composition of the X Factor – but he found its exact Terrestrial Footprint, (the orbital ‘Dry’ Cycles.)
Those who are investigating the ‘production’ of cloud and water vapor would seem to be pulling the wrong rein at the moment.
Gaddes did speculate that the X Factor cause may be Solar Particles,(such as Neutrinos.)
An updated version of this work (including ‘Dry’ Cycle forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from [email protected]
51
In the UK media this morning we are being told to expect a strong Aurora due to a Solar magnetic storm thats heading our way , would it be possible to put to the test or at least look for correlation of Svenmarks hypothesis by looking to see if clouds are reduced during this event.
40
For several years I worked on the east coast of Mindanao, Philippines. The normal weather sequence is a nice blue sky in the morning followed by a build-up of Cumulo Nimbus cloud in the afternoon followed by torrential rain, with lightning, and by about 9-10 pm. it’s clear again. However, around Christmas time the weather comes in from the south east and there is complete cloud cover for 3-4 days, more like a heavy mist. My point is that there was a dramatic drop in temperature then and a pullover was a must.
20
The Thermostat Hypothesis
I check this idea by looking at the summer storms from Florida to North Carolina when that article came out. The number of storms per month decreased from ~20 per month to ~10 per month until you reached Fayetteville North Carolina at which point they became sporadic.
00
“Whatever controls clouds controls the climate”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFryXQbVEA
00
I would expect anyone interested in climate science to start his studies by investigating what causes the biggest known changes in climate — the ice ages.
Why should anyone care about what causes of tiny changes in average temperature — tenths of a degree C.? — over decades or centuries?
Those are tiny changes no one would ever notice, if not for smarmy leftists (falsely) bellowing climate change will end life on Earth as we know it … in their 50+ year effort to scare people about the environment … which allows them to take more control over people and their businesses (the primary goal of leftists).
A review of what scientists think causes ice ages finds no consensus.
If scientists can’t agree on what causes the ice ages, then much more work needs to be done to answer that question.
Answering the question of why Earth’s average temperature is slightly warmer than it was in 1850, assuming you believe the very haphazard measurements, is mainly a waste of time.
Who cares?
Earth’s climate is always warming or cooling — minor changes don’t matter — it’s the big changes that could hurt us.
Reconstructing past ice ages using information from ice cores, deep sea sediments, fossils, landforms, etc.:
(1) Data show ice ages tend to develop slowly, but end more abruptly.
(2) Global temperatures fluctuate often, and rapidly — there were many large, abrupt climate changes over the past 100,000 years.
(3) Within the short time span of a few decades, or a few years, global temperatures are believed to have changed by as much as 15°F (8°C) or more.
A warming trend was interrupted 12,800 years ago when temperatures dropped dramatically in only several decades.
1,300 years later, temperatures spiked as much as 20°F (11°C) within a few years.
Sudden changes like this happened at least a few dozen times during the past 100,000 years.
Are these climate proxy studies accurate?
That’s worth debating.
What caused the sudden large changes in temperature?
Not coal power plants.
Not SUVs.
Probably not CO2 since it seems to rise AFTER the temperature rises, per ice core studies
(perhaps oceans warming from non-CO2 causes, later release CO2?)
After reading this series of articles, I wonder if Mr. Evans has moved us closer to understanding what causes big and/or abrupt climate changes?
I don’t see how he has.
The tiny changes in average temperature in our lifetime are not important, in my opinion, but it seems that Mr. Evans has concentrated on causes of small changes to average temperature.
For his theories to be correct, it would require us to believe a non-climate scientist (wait — I consider that a point in his favor!) has contradicted the “consensus’ of climate modelers.
That’s certainly possible, having read the smarmy politics in climate modeler hacked eMails!
Given how poorly existing climate models have performed when predicting the future climate, and the fact they are based on CO2 as the “climate controller”, which is an unproven assumption, it should not be a tough job to discredit existing climate models.
One smart person could do it.
I hope Mr. Evans is that one person.
Whether his theories are correct or not, time will determine.
If you assume the satellite data are accurate, I wonder if Mr. Evans theories would explain why so much of the warming since 1979 was in the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere, and so little was in the southern half of the Southern Hemisphere?
My only theory is surface albedo changes, in the Arctic only, from dark soot constantly dumped on the snow and ice from burning a lot of coal and wood in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in China
Unlike climate modelers, I admit my dark soot in the Arctic theory could be wrong, and will not character attack anyone who disagrees.
30
Give the man a cigar! I have long thought that “skeptics” were being suckered into wasting their energies refuting a straw-dog political position, a manipulation effective because it purports to threaten our immediate futures, thus triggering immediacy-bias. Just about everyone who knows any history (of the climate, of paleontology, of geology, of whatever) knows that the ancestors of every living creature on the planet today survived much greater climate changes than even the fright-wig cultists yammer about. We all evolved through those changes, and we evolved adaptability to them. That’s mostly what evolutionary (as opposed to situational) epigenetics is all about.
Worse, the cultural- and social-engineering climate-hysteria media blitz has effectively served to distract most of us from the devastation of the biosphere from industrial pollution and mechanical disruption by the Oligarchic owners of corporations and their government chattels — the same ones who want to completely control even more spects of our lives and productivities. And now this handy ruse has broadened in its application, as we hear about “climate refugees” in Europe. No, it’s not wars of conquest, not even proxy wars of conquest, it’s that pesky climate all those folks are fleeing from.
There’s a potential sucker born every minute, and we should be grateful that not all of them have fallen for this scam. Present company honored for being at least semi-sane.
10
Please please please. Learn some genetics and evolutionary biology. Hogwash.
00
I have, and will continue. This is a field in as much dynamic flux as “climate science.” However, the blight of mathematical modeling has not (yet?) corrupted it as much. Fortunately it has not been as politicized, so it still retains some shreds of integrity. Everything you thought you knew about evolution is coming into question, and it serves us ill for anyone to get ideological about what they believe they know or what seem to be “simple facts.” New layers of complexity and chaos are being discovered and explored in yet another field, and for people who like to think of any science as “settled,” and who find emotional comfort in that, this is very disturbing indeed. There is no port in this storm…
00
Bluster all you like but what you wrote is still wrong
00
Richard, I think you missed where Dr Evans says he is deconstructing the accepted climate models, pointing out the fundamental flaws, then later he will build a new model that can be tested.
We are at the beginning of a long, carefully put together argument. This is needed to completely blow the accepted climate models out of the water.
20
I like the deconstructing part.
Point out the flaws in the current physics model — although I would think that with approximately 97% of average temperature simulations over-predicting global warming, often by large amounts, that would be enough evidence the current physics model is wrong … but no leftist seems to care about that.
Criticize the current physics model and then rest your case.
Building a new physics model is likely to be a mistake.
Humans do not know enough about climate change to build a good physics model, that would lead to good predictions from a new GCM based on that new physics model.
Some would say proposing a new physics model could trigger debate, but that’s unlikely — leftists don’t debate their beliefs.
Climate change is mainly a mystery.
It is impossible to build a physics model of a process that is a mystery.
A good model is a “summary” of a process that is well understood.
When scientists figure out the primary causes of the large, and often abrupt, climate changes in the past, it may become possible to build a good physics model for climate change.
But if climate change turns out to be mainly natural, and non-cyclical, it will still be unpredictable — we would know what causes climate change, but still could not predict it !
The primary problem with climate “science” is the faulty physics model, the GCMs based on it, and the false belief that humans can predict the future climate.
I am concerned Mr. Evans does not have the media communications skills to sell his new idea.
I read this quote:
“Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.
I think it’s okay to say CO2 is less important than claimed by the warmunists.
I personally think CO2 has little, if any, effect on the average temperature, based on geologists’ views of climate history, and I want more CO2 in the air to green the Earth.
Mr. Evans’ mistake, and it is a big one, is to claim CO2 caused “less than 20% of the global warming in the last few decades”.
He doesn’t know that.
He will be asked to prove it, and he will fail.
He should not have said any specific number.
Also, the average temperature in 2015 is almost the same as in 1995, per satellite data (averaged RSS + UAH).
Assuming a reasonable margin of error, one can’t even be sure there was ANY warming in the past two decades, much less that CO2 caused “20%” of it !
00
Richard, you say “Mr. Evans’ mistake, and it is a big one, is to claim CO2 caused “less than 20% of the global warming in the last few decades”. He doesn’t know that.”
Stick around. This series will show exactly that.
10
I’ll stick around because I have thought, since first reading about global warming in 1997, that the physics model was wrong, and CO2 was a minor climate change factor, based on the work of geologists studying climate history.
I would never attach a percentage to that belief, because I have no idea what it is — I feel the same advice applies to you — just saying CO2 is a minor factor is challenging enough to the status quo.
Now for some advice you didn’t ask for, but need, about selling your “product”.
Even assuming your model is the best thing since apple pie, and I hope it is, you start with no demand for a new climate physics model outside the small “denier community .
Based on your first ten articles here, and a recent newspaper article featuring your quotes, which I will assume are accurate, even though I don’t trust the media:
You have made two serious mistakes trying to ‘sell’ your product:
(1) You launched your product without creating a demand for it first, and
(2) You are overwhelming people by telling them too much:
Making climate predictions was not necessary.
Even worse, making precise short-term predictions is very high risk of being wrong.
That’s where you lose me.
Here’s your product launch so far:
– The GCMs are wrong,
– The physics behind them is wrong,
– Here’s my new physics model,
– It’s got complex math few people will understand,
– I project +0.3 degrees of global cooling from 2017 to 2021,
followed by a mini-ice age — no global warming at all.
This product launch is like trying to blast long-standing climate change beliefs out of people’s heads by hitting them upside their heads with a sledgehammer!
It’s bad marketing, in my opinion, that will make potential customers go on the offensive to defend their pre-existing CO2 beliefs … and almost guarantees a failed product launch (sorry, but I’m trying to be helpful and direct, not trying to be positive just to get thumbs-up votes).
Stopping the leftist climate change juggernaut must start by challenging the most basic claims about CO2 and warming that scare people, because scared people won’t think straight:
– Warming is not bad news
(it’s actually good news — it follows many cool centuries from 1300 to 1800), and
– More CO2 in the air is not bad news
(it’s actually good news — green plants love CO2, along with the people and animals who eat them — and CO2 has little or no effect on the temperature, according to geologists).
A Five-Step Marketing Plan (first draft outline):
Complete one step before moving to the next — not all at the same time!
(Step 1)
Goal: Get people calm enough about climate change to be open-minded, and listen to you.
(Step 2)
Goal: Identify the problem your new product will solve
(bad GCM predictions).
(Step 3)
Goal: Create a demand for your new product by selling the underlying problem
(bad existing physics model).
(Step 4)
Goal: Sell your new product.
(Step 5)
Goal: Let someone else use your product and present new “alternative” climate projections based on your product.
Let others present the new “alternative” GCM projections to the public, and sell them as at least being worthy of serious debate.
SHORT and LONG-TERM RESULTS:
Steps (1) through (5) could take a year, or many years, if even possible.
It would take many more years to determine if the new “alternative” GCM climate projections were better than the old projections (which we already know are pretty bad).
I believe the best short-term result would be merely convincing people climate science is not settled.
Finally, a real debate could start.
My personal speculation:
For all this to happen, I believe there would have to be little or no global warming during Steps (1) through (5) — obvious warming would make many people think the old physics model was fine after all, and the new product would be likely to fail.
The demonization of CO2 has been entrenched over many decades.
Changing any belief is difficult, and it would probably take years to create a demand for, and sell, a new climate physics model.
I think the support of “Mother Nature” will be needed — a cool or cold decade or two would make most people doubt the demonization of CO2.
“Mother Nature” does not obey any climate models, so does anyone really know what the climate will be like in the next decade or two?
I’d say no.
Not me .
Not you.
Not anyone.
I think we will disagree on that.
When people predict the future, I simply bet against them, and win almost all the time.
My climate change article that includes a more detailed version of the 5 step process is at the link below:
My climate blog is for non-scientists, so you may not be interested, although climate change is mainly good politics, and bad science.
Good luck.
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
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Richard
You are a ‘Newbie” here, and with respect I wish to make a few points:
a) I am an Engineer, and therefore admire David’s work since he is an excellent Engineer.
b) You need to understand that David’s strengths are analytical, since Engineering is in fact ‘Applied Science”.
c) One of Joanne’s many strength is her ability to communicate. Her grasp of science, which is a process rather than an authority or Deity, puts so-called ‘climate scientists’ to shame.
d) In a sense, David and Joanne share the same enthusiasm of a reformed smoker in convincing people not to smoke. Both are reformed ‘believers’ in a political game which is nothing more than a religion.
Because I share the same vocation as David, I am inclined to defend his excellent analytical work.
However, I have a foot in your camp as well. After a long career in Engineering management, I have long been a student and practitioner of “Organisational Change”.
I recognise your five steps as being the same that are necessary to drive change through an organisation. It is often said that changing an organisation is like dismembering an onion, in that one layer must be removed at a time.
It is indeed unfortunate that our governments lack the political will to effect this change. The reality of the situation is that our governments have no intention of change. The present suits the self-centred goals of individual souls in the political class quite well.
It is unreasonable to expect an Internet blog to on its own change to the societal quagmire into which we have ventured. That is the responsibility of all of us. Joanne and David do far more than their fair share. Their work has been instrumental in swinging the pendulum from the ignorance of a false religion back to rational thought rather than emotive extremism.
Unfortunately, there are very powerful and motivated (and rich) forces in the world that oppose any change. Organisation change, as you point out, takes a very long time. If the forces of evil achieve their aim in Paris in six weeks, there will be no opportunity to effect this change for decades or centuries. That is my opinion. It is not a prediction.
Earlier you suggested, rather reluctantly it seems, that you would “stick around”. I wish you would. Perhaps with your expertise you can suggest ways to invoke the very first step. That is to convince the population of the entire world that the propaganda with which they have been deluged is nonsense.
Where do we start? When do we start? Is it too late?
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Rod Stuart October 14, 2015 am
“Where do we start? When do we start? Is it too late?”
As Pointman writes, First is to isolate the pathogen, to see if it will destroy itself, without further infection. Is it to late? Never to late to attempt to survive!
All the best! -will-
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The biggest problem fighting the CC Cult is that too many people trust the government.
In the 1960’s leftists did not trust the government.
Now they love the government.
The second biggest problem is the two decades of brainwashing in the public schools.
The third problem is the 90% left-wing biased mainstream press ignores most contradictory data/ stories.
As a result, few climate change believers know Earth’s climate always changes, and have no idea a degree or two change in a century is not abnormal.
They don’t even know weather satellites exist, much less what their data say.
Environmentalists have been making wrong predictions since the 1960s — yet not one leftist I have ever asked knows what happened as a result of the foolish DDT ban, for one example.
I believe the communication / change effort is almost a lost cause — even Republican and conservative politicians in the US are afraid to challenge the stats quo.
Even most “deniers” refuse to say warming is good news, not bad, and more CO2 in the air is also good news for greening the Earth, for fear of character attacks … or because they don’t believe it.
Politicians are even reluctant to say humans can not predict the future climate, and we have 40 years of bad GCM predictions as proof of that claim.
I think the only hope is for “Mother Nature” to provide global cooling in the next decade or two — astronomers say it already started in 2014.
Mr. Evans already has a tough job to convince people CO2 is not that important — I have no clue why he had to claim it is responsible for 20% of climate change — he doesn’t know that number, nor does anyone else, so it should remain TBD.
Making climate predictions (in the newspaper) was also counter-productive and liable to backfire since predictions usually do. … If he is right, however, he could later claim he was an “expert” even if the correct forecast was just luck.
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Richard, you say “I have no clue why he had to claim it is responsible for 20% of climate change”
That figure is found later in this blog post series by applying the alternative model.
00
Richard, I hope you read post 1, the intro. Couple of small points:
1. This series is about the basic model, not the GCMs. It has has big implications for the GCMs, but we will explore them in a separate post.
2. The criticism of the conventional basic model, and the construction of an alternative model with a different estimate of FCS, is separate from the notch-delay solar theory that produces the prediction. Yes they may get conflated as the message gets shortened and dumbed down for wider consumption, but the technical people who matter will not be confused. Logically one needs to show that ECS is low before or as apart of showing global warming is mainly due to a solar factor — so they belong in the same series.
As argued in post 1, the CO2 theory will not be defeated unless the conventional basic climate model is shown to be wrong. No amount of political argument will overcome the warmists while they “know” they are right because of “basic physics” — and they hold the scientific high ground.
Therefore showing the conventional basic model is wrong is a necessary, though not necessarily sufficient condition, for defeating the AGW meme.
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I know the series is about the basic climate model.
But the basic climate physics model is just a tool for debate until it is USED to guide the programming of at least one GCM, and an “alternative” climate projection from that GCM is released to the public.
Most people will see your model as an “alternative” climate model, rather than as the right model.
If used to guide GCM programming, and then a GCM projection based on your model is years-later found to be more accurate than GCM projections based on the old CO2-is-the-root-of-all-evil-physics-model, then you win — we all win.
One regret I have is that I learned all the math you use in engineering school, hated it, and after a few years I switched to finance, and had all the differential equations surgically removed from my head — not realizing I would have finally found a use for them 40 years later!
In the newspaper article you make specific fairly near-term climate predictions with great confidence, as if you can predict the future.
I know you have many college degrees — I only have two — but there is no such thing as a degree in predicting the future, and a high probability of being wrong.
“Those who have knowledge don’t predict. Those who predict don’t have knowledge.”
Lao Tzu
Get the wife to help publicize how bad prior climate predictions were — climate cult members don’t talk about that.
– And the taxpayers are paying a lot of money for those bad projections.
– Create a demand for alternative GCM projections, based on different theories, by ridiculing the current projections Alinsky-style.
If you can raise enough doubt about the GCMs science foundation/architecture, those annoying “the science is settled claims” may start falling apart.
Good luck.
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‘A review of what scientists think causes ice ages finds no consensus.’
Milankovitch cycles are generally accepted. The amount of energy reaching earth remains reasonably constant, so on the ground it must have something to do with the lengthening of the winter season and the failure of ice to melt in the summer.
The LIA is a good example of how this might come about.
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Yes “…Milankovitch cycles are generally accepted….”
……
NASA-
But there was still a problem in the minds of younger scientists until this paper In defense of Milankovitch by Dr. Gerard Roe. Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington
As Luboš Motl found out Roe was just re-inventing something Nigel Calder and others understood back in 1974.
So the Milankovitch theory has been rescued and what does it tell us?
Berger (2002) based on a model, is what NASA/NOAA has up on the web at their Paleoclimatology Educational Outreach Page (Astronomical Theory of Climate Change) as their latest reference. The page was up dated in April 2009 but ignores this more recent paper from 2007: Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
(wwwDOT)sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379107002715
More important it ignores this important paper from 2005 that has never been refuted:
So why are we worried about warming and more CO2?
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I love this. Everytime we resolve some of the workings of the real world, we discover new challenges within our improved insights. Our reward for solving one is a new set embedded within. In this case, for example, now that the M cycles are better accepted, we can now ask what happened around 1.2 million years ago to change the glaciation-cycle period from approximately 41,000 years to approximately 100,000 years (and intensify the temperature swings). Similarly, we can ask what happened around 2.7 million years ago to initiate the 41,000-year periodicity? Orbital changes? Entrainments? Co-factors? Resonances? Some stability-threshold as the planet slid down a general cooling? Any ideas…?
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Maybe even some sort of comet or planetary collisions as Velikovsky described. Perhaps a battle between Pleiadeans and Nibiruans…
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YOU WROTE:
“I love this. Everytime we resolve some of the workings of the real world, we discover new challenges within our improved insights. Our reward for solving one is a new set embedded within.”
MY RESPONSE:
I have two friends who seem obsessed about the weather / climate;
One is always looking at weather reports, even for other states where her children live.
I say: “It’s Fall, and if you just look out the window you can see it’s not raining — why else do you need to know?”
Maybe we should just accept the ever-changing climate — it’s barely changed in 150 years — and move on to debating more important things … like UFOs?
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‘Milankovitch cycles are generally accepted.’
They WERE generally accepted.
There have been a lot of questions and challenges in the past few years.
Even if you accept the M. cycles as the cause of all five of Earth’s ice ages, how would they explain large, abrupt changes of the average temperature?
The climate proxy studies could be wrong about those large, abrupt temperature changes — that’s one possible explanation.
I don’t have any other explanation.
There was a generally accepted solar constant, and then we launched satellites to measure it, and it wasn’t constant.
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“…how would they explain large, abrupt changes of the average temperature?”
I assume you are talking about D-O and Bond events. Try: E. M. Smith (Contains links to a lot of papers and articles) and Dr. Clive Best
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The M Cycles do okay explaining the current ice age.
But don’t do the job of explaining why there were five ice ages, not evenly spaced over 4.5 billion years, of different lengths, with cooling generally gradual and warming more abrupt, not to mention explaining any large, rapid climate changes, that seemingly occurred at random.
When talking about climate proxies I guess I should not use the term “average temperature”, since each proxy is local, and an average of proxy data is not really average temperature of the planet.
00
Richard Greene says: “The M Cycles do okay explaining the current ice age.
But don’t do the job of explaining why there were five ice ages…”
………….
The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection — Dr. Nir Shaviv
Links to papers at bottom.
00
The Daily Express in Britain has put out a report on the findings of Dr Evans.
‘World will start COOLING DOWN in 2017, claims one of planet’s top climate change experts’
‘ONE of the world’s leading climate change experts claims to have discovered mathematical anomalies which effectively ‘disprove’ global warming.’
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/611111/Former-government-expert-disproves-climate-change-and-says-world-will-soon-cool-down
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Thanks for that link “oldbrew”, I saved the article to my server for long term reference.
David Evans, your time starts now. It should be noted that you have already moved your “imminent ice age” date out from 2015 to 2017 with a new fudge factor range.
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My money is on 2016 as the global cooling tipping point, a very negative NAO accompanied by a modest El Nino followed by a strong La Nina.
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Warmists do not understand that an ice free Arctic and an El Nino both increase the outgoing long wave radiation from earth to space.
The LWIR may temporarily warm the atmosphere on its way to space but that is a transient condition and the long term effect is removal of stored heat in the oceans. This stored heat is one of the major players in earth’s climate that keeps the climate from oscillating wildly. (Think moon)
Since the sun is now in a quiet phase the deep ocean energy released is not being replenished at the rate it was in the decades from 1979 to 2008.
Sunlight penetration depth into the ocean:
http://www.john-daly.com/sverdrup.gif
In 2008, the sun set the following records:
Solar Radiation: Sources of Energy for the Earth’s Atmosphere
(wwwDOT)nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/science/Solar%20Irradiance.html
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Solar Radiation – – Energy Flux – Solar Cycle Change – Deposited
TSI mostly Vis & IR – 1366 W/m2 – 1.2 W/m2 – 0.1% – Surface
MUV (200-300 nm).- – 15.4 W/m2 – 0.17 W/m2 – 1% – 15-50 km
FUV (126-200 nm) – – 50 mW/m2 – 15 mW/m2 – 30% – 30-120 km
EUV (0-125 nm) – – -10 mW/m2 – 10 mW/m2 – 100% – 80-250 km
***************************
Ultraviolet light creates and destroys the ozone layer depending on the wavelength so the changes listed in that chart matter. A shift in the ratio will shift the amount of ozone created vs that destroyed. Ozone production is driven by UV radiation of wavelengths less than 240 nm. Ozone is a highly unstable molecule so when it absorbs low energy UV (240–310 nm) it splits into an ordinary oxygen molecule and a free oxygen atom.
In the three decades prior to the 2009 solar minimum and the switch to a ‘quiet sun (1979 to 2009) the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth’s surface increased markedly. This energy would be absorbed by the oceans at depths up to 100 meters.
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If we can prove that the sun is the main driver, then we’ll have the game sown up.
‘Analysis of simulated upper ocean temperature anomalies confirms that the North Atlantic Ocean provides the memory of the solar forcing required to produce the lagged NAO response. These results have implications for improving skill in decadal predictions of the European and North American winter climate.’
Andrews et al 2015
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Good to see the MSM run with this.
It feels like the long awaited paradigm shift, full credit to the combo of Evans and Nova for helping to turn the world upside down.
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This is sad. If you want to be a serious scientist, the first step is to stop making predictions about the future.
Humans can’t predict the future.
They try, and fail, again and again.
“Experts” do even worse than laymen, in their specific fields.
I read this quote:
“Dr Evans says historic global warming has been down to solar activity – a process called “albedo modulation” – the waxing and waning of reflected radiation from the Sun.”
“Between 2017 and 2021 he estimates a cooling of about 0.3C before the mini ice age in the 2030s.”
My response:
We are in a warming trend since 1850, called the Modern Warming by some people, assuming the measurements are correct.
Ice core studies suggest warming trends typically last hundreds of years.
A safe “prediction” would be to state that Earth typically has hundreds of years of mild warming, followed by hundreds of years of mild cooling — people strongly prefer warm centuries — and then once in a while a lot of ice shows up.
That prediction would be based on climate proxy studies, and written anecdotal information.
The specific prediction Mr. Evans has made will get him some attention, but in just a few years he is likely to be proven wrong.
Learn from the leftists — predict so far in the future you will be dead before anyone can prove your prediction is wrong !
It is smart to criticize others when they predict the future, since they will usually be wrong.
Even smarter if you refute a physics model they had used for those predictions.
That alone, is hard enough to do — the physics model is the foundation of a trillion dollar industry !
It is not so smart for people to make predictions of the future, since they will usually be wrong.
Mr. Evans has done that.
His predictions were not necessary, and are likely to prove counterproductive.
He shot himself in the foot.
He had to sell his new climate physics model first.
If that worked, already a monumental task, someone could incorporate his physics model in a GCM, and then make predictions with that. (If that has already been done, it’s not obvious to me).
Want to lose my attention?
Just make predictions of the future.
State them with great confidence.
Never admit you could be wrong.
Haven’t we had enough predictions from the warmunists?
Do we really need more long-term climate predictions?
We need a lot more knowledge about climate change.
From that knowledge, we can develop good physics models.
From good physics models, we develop good GCMs to make forecasts.
Of course the forecasts will still be wrong, since ‘Mother Nature’ doesn’t obey computer models.
However, scientists with PhDs, using Super Computers, making the usual climate forecasts (life on Earth will end as we know it unless you do as we say without question!) … would make a good movie!
01
Clouds require heat to produce evaporation and they provide insulation thus lowering the temperature. In Australia if it is sunny during a summer day and the clouds come over in the evening the heat is retained during the night. No clouds and the desert night is cold – the heat goes straight out to space. As such clouds moderate the heat. Both warm and cold climates can be dry. Dry cold climates are often cloudless.
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From about 2017-2023 the centre of the Sun will be more than one solar diameter away from the solar system centre of mass (barycentre), due to planetary movements.
At the same time it looks as if solar activity in terms of sunspots will be very low compared to anything in the last century. So it will be interesting to see what goes on climatically in that period.
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Trouet et al think they have found the mechanism.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19342585
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“So it will be interesting to see what goes on climatically in that period.”
That ‘interesting’ depends of if you are a common serf (proletariat) vs haute bourgeoisie, hateful atmospheric watermelon gas, with names like Naomi something or Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen something!!
00
I would just like to mention that control systems with proportional negative feedback simply reduce system error proportionally depending on loop gain, but do not eliminate error. However, if there is an integrator in the loop, the control error can be reduced to zero. I would suggest that formation of clouds is virtually an integrating factor and would tend to zero the error in climate control. Evidently, it is not perfect.
20
Global cloud cover decreased by approximately 5%, as measured by the international satellite cloud climatology project.
Ole Humlum covers this extensively on his climate4you.com site under climate + Clouds. The large direct forcing from clouds gives you the ability to calculate climate sensitivity for a real forcing which is approximately neutral.
What is driving the clouds is unknown, Solar? Oceanic? Multidecadal changes of the lower stratosphere by volcanic chemical alteration of H2O concentrations driving zonal meridional patterns of jet stream forcing?
10
Mr. Evans’ quotes (in parentheses), on models in general, were from the comments section of article #7.
I started this series at #9 and then went back to #1 — I didn’t read #7 until yesterday.
Since Mr. Evans’ comments apply to any of his articles, I thought it would be useful to re-post them here, and I’ve added some comments:
David Evans wrote these comments on
October 1, 2015 at 7:00 pm:
“Models are always wrong.”
My comment:
If a model can predict better than a default forecast (no change), it can be useful even if “wrong”.
Evidence of the current climate model physics: CO2 levels control the average temperature:
(1) 4.5 billion years = no correlation
(2) 1976 to 1998 = positive correlation
So the foundation of AGW is a mere 22 years of climate history ?
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“They (models) simplify a situation, omitting lots of stuff.”
My comment:
Complex processes that are not well understood, such as climate change, are likely to have models with errors.
The errors could be unknown factors (perhaps something such as extraterrestrial dust), major factors falsely believed to be minor factors (such as solar energy/cosmic rays), and minor factors falsely assumed to be maker factors (such as CO2 levels).
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“A good model captures the essence of a situation by getting the main behavior correct most of the time, presumably by accurately portraying the 5% of the reality that governs 95% of its behavior, or something like that.”
My comment:
Don’t most people say 20% and 80% — where did you get 5% and 95%?
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“The current conventional climate models have been found wanting, badly. I claim they have the wrong architecture, so they have not got a ghost of a chance of working properly.”
My comment:
By “architecture”, I assume you mean: The theory that CO2 levels control the average temperature.
Geologists agree that theory is wrong.
So do most other scientists, except climate modelers, assuming they are real scientists.
I believe climate modelers are not “real” scientists because they forget the last step of the three steps in basic science:
(1) theory, (2) prediction and (3) V-E-R-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N)
It’s sad that so many scientists are reluctant to question the greenhouse theory, fearing vicious character attacks.
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“They (the models) seemed to work for temperature (though not the hotspot) when the world was warming in the 1980s and 1990s, but have failed since then.”
My comment:
A model used for hundred year forecasts could take over 50 years before evidence can prove it wrong:
– A worthless model could appear to be accurate for a few decades, yet end up making a poor 100-year forecast.
– A good model could appear to be inaccurate for a few decades, yet still end up making a good 100-year prediction.
Missing the “pause” (assuming its not just measurement error) does not prove a model has “failed”.
Long-term predictions of doom are often used by religious and political leaders to scare people about something that can never be disproved in their lifetimes (such as going to hell, or Earth turning into a ‘hell’ from climate change).
For the same reason, climate models are not used for ten year forecasts.
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“By changing the architecture we can make them (models)perform better. Not perfect, just better, at least with respect to CO2.”
My comment:
A process has to be well understood for anyone to create a model that would make decent predictions.
Climate change is mainly a mystery — until the mystery is solved, the only way to create a good climate model would be a lucky guess (with a low probability of that actually happening).
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A general comment on your series of articles:
I assume many people will say a non-climate scientist like you has a lot of nerve thinking he knows better than the consensus of climate modelers.
But they may not realize advances in science are usually from ONE scientist upsetting the status quo, who often gets character attacked, or ignored, by the “consensus”.
Good luck — I hope you’re that one man.
The smarmy politics of climate “science” has already hurt the reputation of scientists, in general.
And getting “science lectures” from Al Gore, Barry Obama, and The Pope — the ‘Moe, Larry and Curly’ of climate science — is becoming more intolerable every month.
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Richard, it would be more helpful if you made smaller comments under the relevant posts, but thanks!
The “architecture” of a model means what is connected to what in the model. See post 11 (when it finally goes up).
10
David,
You certainly are on the right track. Neither the S-B equation, nor Planck’s equation,make any sense at all as the Earth + atmosphere, from space, simply do not have one temperature. Your four different temperatures, you call layers, may be enough, but even there they cannot be independent. The WV one is even dependent on how far the Sun is (rotationally). Remember Daytime clouds/haze decrease the local surface temperature, but increase the local nightime surface temperature.
The 15 micron CO2 band is the one that does not change radiative exitance to space above 100 ppmv. What change in atmospheric CO2 amount does to the rest of the surface/atmosphere temperature has never been measured, or even have viable conjecture! The Only conjecture (falsified) is an increase in upper troposphere temperature.
All the best! -will-
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David,
Another point of atmospheres for you and Stephen Wilde to consider, for understanding of how atmosphere actually works, copied from my post at Tallbloke’s:
If you think that weight = mg for any mass in a gravitational field than your understanding is being undermined by nonsense algebraic formula. That formula that must remain abstract so somehow g is a function of (equal to) weight/mass. This is of course nonsense as the gravity of one mass is independent of any other mass!
The only proper concept of weight is that of heaviness or the anticipation of acceleration should that ‘observing that heaviness’ be removed (scale, post, building, etc). The way that the Earth expresses gravity in this atmosphere is never weight, as the atmosphere is part of Earth’s gravity. The gravity expresses only as a pressure, density, and temperature gradients with respect to altitude.
This is all in compliance with all physical laws including 2LTD. 2LTD expresses as possible, but not necessary, spontaneous power transfer in a direction of a single lower potential. This atmosphere within itself is isopotential. It expresses no spontaneous thermal, gravitational, or barometric (pressure) differentials in any direction. Any part of this atmosphere, within this atmosphere can express no weight (heaviness).
This property of the atmosphere is what “allows” all convection or advection if you like. All movement of atmosphere within this atmosphere requires no work. It is always isentropic but never adiabatic, as interchange of mass is still spontaneous.
Of course to provide such movement in a finite time interval, non isentropic accelerations of mass must be considered, especially those concerned with change of direction of mass motion (continuum mechanics). The forces needed to accelerate (the non gravitational pressure differentials) in any direction can be very very small but do accumulate over the vast volumes of this isopotential atmosphere. Slight buoyancy may seem gravitational, but is not, it is differential density, acted upon by atmospheric gradients.
All the best! -will-
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Richard’
“A process has to be well understood for anyone to create a model that would make decent predictions.”
This may be true! However, perhaps David can show that the atmospheric water content (in all 5 phases, 2 colloids) must be the 5% that must control 95% of what this atmosphere does at any time and place. If the so called “scientists” modeling, have no clue as to the mechanism of such, then all models are falsified, because of the structure, not details, of all the models! They simply in no way represent this Earth and its atmosphere. Will the current modelers (all of them), please go to the place they are modeling and leave us earthlings alone?? Any help in determining/understanding the actual hydrodynamics of this atmosphere would be a start in the correct direction.
All the best! -will-
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Nicely put Will
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Thank you! My native language, I think, is pictures. as in which way to mommy’s tit! 😉 Try to picture the atmosphere, not some algebraic formula. Describing the picture so that others “get the picture” is sometimes difficult, as all others have a different mommy’s tit!! 🙁
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From a science point of view:
We know the current physics model is bad because the climate forecasts are consistently wrong.
From a political point of view:
The current physics model is perfect , because humans can be blamed, and then told how to live.
My own field is finance and economics — I got interested in climate change in 1997 because the CC cult appeared to be attacking free markets / economic growth / cheap high density energy sources, all of which I like.
I do not see Mr. Evans working on explaining the five non-identical ice ages and large, abrupt, seemingly random climate changes in the climate proxy record — those could be dangerous to humans.
Evans seems to be working on explaining why the temperature might go up or down a degree or two in a century — that’s not dangerous to anyone.
My guess is clouds and water vapor change to moderate other causes of climate change — they are negative feed back mechanisms — but are not the root cause of significant climate changes. But then I could be very wrong!
10
David, it has been noted that the albedo of the northern and southern hemispheres is about the same (see http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/10/the-albedo-of-earth/), despite differences in land to ocean ratios.
It is quite likely that some there is some effect causing this to occur.
Does your model explain this phenomenon?
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2dogs, my alternative model sheds no light on this. The revamped notch-delay model might be connected (later in the series). The albedo symmetry is an important clue, but I have no explanation.
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surely, this observation thus indicates that land-ocean ratio does not explain (to any significant extent, at least) albedo?
00
David: I’ve gotten behinds reading and understanding your series, and perhaps shouldn’t comment at this late date. However, I think it is important to distinguish between three forms of change: “anthropogenically forced” (GHGs, aerosols, land use change, etc), “naturally forced” (solar and volcanic, and now EDA), and “unforced”. Change is often called variation or variability, creating the terms “anthropogenically forced variability”, “naturally forced variability” and “unforced variability”. Often, the second and third categories are lumped together to produce “natural variability”, ignoring whether change is caused by a forcing or not. ENSO, AMO, PDO and other oscillations are best known forms of unforced variability and within a decade or a few decades unforced variability can overwhelm forced change. For example, El Chichon was followed by a very strong El Nino, which negated much of the cooling that might have been expected (and was seen after Pinatubo).
Why is this important? It is always important to remember that chaotic systems produce an unknown about unforced variability. It is probably impossible to distinguish between EDA and unforced changes in planetary cloud cover. The instrumental record isn’t long enough for us to know how much unforced variability is normal on a decadal time scale on our planet. Below is a short persuasive paper from Lorenz about the difficulty of detecting forced changes in a chaotic system:
http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Chaos_spontaneous_greenhouse_1991.pdf
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Frank: If ENSO, AMO, PDO and other oscillations are unforced variability, surely whatever in turn causes them is doing forcing, which would make ENSO etc forced variabilities?
ENSO leads global surface temperature by 6 months, in a strikingly good correlation over the shorter term (for higher frequency components) but not longer term (the lower frequencies). So I would guess that whatever controls global surface temperature also controls ENSO, making ENSO a forced variability.
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Perhaps the time constant (RC) while important for tomorrow, for this discussion of Earth might be better expressed as ‘transport delay’, similar result with feedback control on phase. But a different POV with respect to time or the reciprocal ‘frequency’. Transport delay can jump over many cycles, so is quite different than time constant. Weird how dey do dat? 😉
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David: ENSO is definitely an example of unforced or internal variability. During normal or La Nina conditions, winds (driven by our rotating planet) transport the ocean surface warmed by the sun with the Western Pacific, making sea level about 1 foot higher there than of South America. The warm water sinks in the Western Pacific Warm Pool and cooler water upwells off the coast of South American. Occasionally those easterly winds slacken and warmer water surges back across the Equatorial Pacific, suppressing upwelling and making the Eastern Equatorial Pacific much warmer than usual (which eventually is distributed to much of the rest of the planet). Bob Tisdale has written a long series of posts about ENSO at WUWT
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/el-nino-and-la-nina-basics-introduction-to-the-pacific-trade-winds/
There is a huge amount of very cold water in the deep ocean. Some exchange between the deep ocean and the surface takes place all the time and the equations of fluid flow have chaotic solutions. Any fluctuation that slows down this exchange (for a year, like El Nino, or a century, perhaps like the MWP) will make the planet warmer and anything that speeds it up will make it cooler (for several years, like La Nina, or centuries, perhaps like the LIA). Many suspect the AMO is linked to changes in the MOC in the Atlantic. The IPCC would like us to believe that significant climate phenomena persisting longer than ENSO (“decadal variability”) like the AMO, PDO, MWP or LIA are forced or have low amplitude, so that they can attribute all 20th century warming to GHGs. In a prophetic 1991 paper, Lorenz explains why this isn’t appropriate:
http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Chaos_spontaneous_greenhouse_1991.pdf
ScienceofDoom has a nice introduction to chaotic behavior beginning with the post below. He uses the term “natural variability” – which can encompass both naturally-forced variability (solar and volcanos) an unforced (internal) variability, but it should be obvious that he is talking about unforced variability when discussing chaotic systems. I recognize that chaos isn’t important to the model you are describing, but it is important when you wish to compare models to observations.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/07/22/natural-variability-and-chaos-one-introduction/
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