August 11 , 2007
The Week That Was
August 11 , 2007
"One has only to cut away the alarmist rhetoric and the media distractions, one has only to focus on the central question in the climate-change debate, and at once the fact that there is no scientific consensus about climate change is laid bare. The central question is this: By how much will global temperature increase in response to any foreseeable increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide? On that question, the 'climate-sensitivity question', there is no consensus whatsoever within the scientific community. There is no scientific basis for the current panic." Lord Christopher Monckton, international authority on climate-change policy
· Lehman Brothers investment firm, which advises its clients on how to profit from AGW http://www.lehman.com/press/pdf_2007/TheBusinessOfClimateChange.pdf They may regret not having done their ‘due diligence’
Maybe soot is responsible for much Arctic sea-ice melting. See
20th-Century Industrial Black Carbon Emissions Altered Arctic Climate Forcing
Joseph R. McConnell et al http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1144856v1?etoc
And also "C"ing Arctic Climate with Black Ice
by Richard B. Alley http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147470v1?etoc
Black carbon (BC) from biomass and fossil fuel combustion alters chemical and physical properties of the atmosphere and snow albedo, yet little is known about its emission or deposition histories. Measurements in ice cores indicate that sources and concentrations of BC in Greenland precipitation varied greatly since 1788 as a result of boreal forest fires and industrial activities. Beginning about 1850, industrial emissions resulted in a seven-fold increase in ice core BC concentrations with most change occurring in winter. BC concentrations after about 1951 were lower but increasing. At its maximum from 1906 to 1910, estimated surface climate forcing in early summer from BC in Arctic snow was about 3 W m-2, eight times typical pre-industrial forcing.
NASA's James Hansen Reported Temperature Data Error Discovered
Excerpt: Steve McIntyre: I observed recently that Hansen's GISS series contains an apparent error in which Hansen switched the source of GISS raw from USHCN adjusted to USHCN raw for all values January 2000 and later. For Detroit Lakes MN, this introduced an error of 0.8 deg C. I've collated GISS raw minus USHCN adjusted for all USHCN sites (using the data scraped from the GISS site, for which I was most criticized in Rabett-world). Figure 1 below shows a histogram of the January 2000 step for the 1221 stations (calculated here as the difference between the average of the difference after Jan 2000 and for the 1990-1999 period.) < > NASA admits Error: "When we did our monthly update this morning, an offset based on the last 10 years of overlap in the two data sets was applied and our on-line documentation was changed correspondingly with an acknowledgment of your contribution. This change and its effect will be noted in our next paper on temperature analysis and in our end-of-year temperature summary." (Stay tuned for this developing story)
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1868
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New Rankings for Warmest Years: 1934 Now Warmest in U.S. History NASA Temp Error Rewrites Record Books!
[Note: 80% of man-made CO2 emissions occurred after 1940]
Excerpt: By Joseph D'Aleo, Icecap
With the changes to the GISS data made today after an error was found by Stephen McIntyre, 1998 falls to #2 behind 1934 as the warmest year, followed by 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999 and 1953. Expect more changes to come in the months ahead as more scrutiny of the databases takes place. Note in the graph below the peak in the five-year mean around 2000 is a mere 0.25F higher than that in the early 1930s.
Don't expect any press releases from NASA or NOAA about this change or much coverage on the networks or major newspapers.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/new_rankings_for_warmest_years/
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More on NASA's Reported Whopper of a Mistake
Excerpt: Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leader-board, behind even 1900. (World rankings are calculated separately.) Note: For the new leader-board see http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt. The old data has been erased; by sheer chance, I had the old data active in my R-session but I can't give a link to it.) GISS U.S. Temperatures (deg C) in New Order YearOldNew 19341.231.25 19981.241.23 19211.121.15 20061.231.13 19311.081.08 19990.940.93 19530.910.90 19900.880.87 19380.850.86 19390.840.85 Here's the old leader-board.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1880
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Recent changes to the NASA historical climate data records refute claims by Gore that 9 of the ten hottest years in U.S. history occurred since 1995 (Newsbusters)
Excerpt: A change in climate history data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday. < > Most importantly, according to the GISS, 1998 is no longer the warmest year in American history. That honor once again belongs to 1934.As global warming is such a key issue being debated all around this country and on Capitol Hill, wouldn't such a change by the agency responsible for calculating such things be important to disseminate? When this correction was made by Hansen's team at the GISS, shouldn't it have been reported? In fact, it is quite disgraceful that it wasn't, as it suggests that a government agency is actually participating in a fraud against the American people by withholding information crucial to a major policy issue now facing the nation. Think this will be Newsweek's next cover-story? No, I don't either. Post facto thought: If Hansen's team had made changes to the data which showed that ten of the ten warmest years in American history occurred since 1995, do you think that would have been reported? Yeah, I do, too.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/09/did-media-or-nasa-withhold-climate-history-data-changes-public
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So they changed the recorded temps????
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/09/bombshell-nasa-revises-recent-us-temperatures-downward-after-y2k-bug-fix/
See esp the graph in the coyote blog
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/08/official-us-cli.html
Well worth reading -- and note the strong temp decline between 1940 and 1975
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SFS/7/24/2007
In support of the IPCC conclusion that current warming is anthropogenic, Wm. Collins et al. (“The physical science behind climate change,” SciAm August 2007, pp.64-73) assert that the mismatch between surface and troposphere warming trends has now been resolved. However, this claim is not supported by actual observations.
According to the authoritative CCSP (Climate Change Science Program) Report 1.1, issued by NOAA in April 2006 www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm , there is considerable disparity between the two warming trends. Greenhouse (GH) models indicate that the tropics should provide the most sensitive location for validation; trends there should increase by 200-300% with altitude, peaking at around 10 kilometers – a characteristic “fingerprint” for GH warming. However, the data from weather balloons (and satellites) show the opposite result – no increasing trend with altitude but a lower trend than at the surface.
Fig. 1.3F shows a calculated pattern (from a typical state-of-the-art model); Fig 5.7E shows the observed pattern (from the most competent analysis of balloon data). The fingerprints just don’t match; all one has to do is to "connect the dots." Fig. 5.4G of the CCSP makes the disparity even clearer; it shows the difference between surface and troposphere trends for a collection of some 20 models (displayed as a histogram) and for the balloon and satellite data: This difference is positive for the data, but negative for the models. [The disparity is less apparent in the CCSP report’s Summary, which displays model results in terms of “range” rather than as histograms.]
This disparity is a “smoking gun” that contradicts the IPCC conclusion. Of course, it does not deny the existence of an enhanced GH effect from the considerable increase in anthropogenic GH gases, principally CO2. It does suggest, however, that present climate models greatly overestimate the magnitude of the effect. One may conclude, therefore, that future warming calculated from these same models will be a good deal less than currently assumed. Since there is little doubt about the radiative forcing from CO2 increases, one suspects that the models omit a negative feedback, likely from a slight increase in cloudiness or from a change in the atmospheric distribution of water vapor, the most important GH gas.
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S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. He did his undergraduate studies at Ohio State University and earned his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He was the founding dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences at the University of Miami, the founding director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, and served for five years as vice chairman of the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. Dr. Singer has written or edited over a dozen books and monographs, including, most recently, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, which discusses the evidence for natural climate cycles of cooling and warming, as seen in the geological record.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/
Newsweek: Alarmed by Deniers
By Paul Chesser ,Published 8/9/2007
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11847
Now even the partisan-resistant public must acknowledge what conservatives have known for a long time: that Newsweek is driven by a leftist agenda, even if they won't acknowledge it themselves.
That can't be illustrated more clearly than by the magazine's cover story this week, titled "Global Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine." Science writer Sharon Begley writes proudly and passionately in what she obviously thinks is an eye-opening expose' about the conspiring entities who "deny the science of climate change." Her Woodward and Bernstein-like prose tracks money passages from big energy producers to intellectual skeptics, who exist to undermine what she says is the consensus view: that human-induced worldwide warming is a threat to the planet's existence. Begley bemoans the results of a new Newsweek poll that "finds the influence of the denial machine remains strong," with respondents split about human influence on the greenhouse effect. She blames the "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks [disclosure: that's me!] and industry for creating "a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."
In other words, those of you still with reservations have been duped. What else could be the explanation, since Begley claims rock-solid resources that uncontrovertibly nailed down the Left's climate change dogma?
One proof she characterized as "the verdict." It came from "a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries" that said, "warming of the climate system is unequivocal." What was the report? Who were the scientists? I have no idea -- apparently all that matters are the number of experts (probably no larger than the amount of scientists working at a large state university), the number of countries (all friends of the U.S., right?), and the word "unequivocal." And what do you think were the philosophical leanings of "governments, academia, green groups and (unidentified) businesses?" Consensus indeed.
Upping the ante, Begley also cited the most recent update from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which "was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations" and attributed at least part of global warming to human causes. Again, strength in numbers, but what has the IPCC really said? If you haven't read it yourself you don't really know, because Begley doesn't dig into it.
The truth is, read any legitimate scientific study on climate -- including IPCC's -- that suggests human influence is the dominant cause for global warming, and you will discover dozens of qualifiers like "could," "possibly," "potentially," and "may." For all the certainty and consensus that global warming fear-mongers assert, those sound a lot like weasel words.
When taking that into consideration, you realize that both camps are in the "maybe" category on climate change. It's just a matter of degrees (there's a fortunate pun). But the consensus claimers are all too happy to let the allegation "they deny the science of global warming" stand alone, making the undiscerning believe that global warming skeptics reject the clear evidence that the earth is warming. Both sides generally agree that the planet has increased in temperature by one degree in the past 100 years; the so-called "deniers" simply question the cause and whether there is a need for the costly remedies that the green groups want.
But Newsweek ignores that uncomplicated nuance. Instead Begley and her reporter helpers (including that paragon of objectivity, Eleanor Clift) largely avoid any substantive discussion over the scientific views both sides hold in the debate, and instead snipe at those who doubt Newsweek's panic agenda. Their opponents consist of industry and associations "representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities," who "sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research." The contrarian curmudgeons' scientists, like MIT's Richard Lindzen and Virginia climatologist Patrick Michaels, are dismissed as obstinate folks who don't do their own climate research but instead "kibitzed about other people's" (like most in the climate change caution camp). The intellect and credentials of the doubters are irrelevant in Newsweek's eyes.
At the heart of it all, of course, is the deniers' money. Begley emphasizes repeatedly how big oil and utilities feed the opinions from conservative think tanks. But what about the flow of cash that sustains the nonprofit-driven eco-movement? The dollars pushing global warming paranoia, coming from wealthy foundations like those established by Merck, the Rockefellers and Ted Turner, dwarf the skeptics' resources. But Begley and Newsweek show prejudice only against certain shades of green -- both monetary and ecological.
Begley's piece should surprise nobody. Anyone who has subscribed to Newsweek in recent years could not help but notice the near-weekly articles promoting the global warming scare agenda, and "what can be done about it."
This story reflects Newsweek's newest paranoia: the "skeptics" are finally getting traction on an issue dear to the hearts of the leftist media. Expect the attacks on the "denial machine" to escalate.
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Paul Chesser is an associate editor for the John Locke Foundation pchesser@carolinajournal.com
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"Newsweek's latest cover story predicting 'global warming' catastrophe is no more scientific and no less incredible than its story 30 years ago predicting 'global cooling'," said Robert Ferguson, President of the influential Science and Public Policy Institute (www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org).
"Newsweek appears a naively willing party to a sophisticated but unsuccessful campaign, strikingly similar to the tobacco industry's callous 40-year campaign challenging the established causative link between smoking and fatal diseases such as lung cancer. This strategy provides a positive "pro-science" public stance that masks the ignominious activity of institutional and professional persecution of numerous scientists whose honest work casts legitimate doubt upon the more alarmist projections of the supposed man-made global warming ‘consensus.’ "
Like the tobacco industry, this campaign (to which Newsweek has made itself party) has:
Ø "Manufactured uncertainty and fear by stridently proclaiming certainty and consensus based on dubious and uncertain modeled results predicting disastrous consequences of a warmer climate. For a thorough understanding of the limits on the extent of the 'consensus' on climate change, please see: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton_papers/consensus_what_consensus_among_climate_scientists_the_debate_is_not_over.html.
Ø "Adopted a strategy of information laundering by acting as a seemingly independent and respectable front publicly to further the message of climate apocalypse and thereby to profit by confusing and terrifying the public.
Ø "Ignored or misrepresented peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-picked facts in an attempt to persuade the media and the public that current climate change is exceptional. In the entire Newsweek piece, there is not a single reference to any peer-reviewed scientific paper.
Ø "Attempted to shift the focus away from research based on observation with misleading charges that journalistic balance on climate change is the enemy of free of speech, and that those who disagree with the hysterical view of 'global warming' should be silenced.
Ø "Stifled legitimate debate on whether 'global warming' will be beneficial and on whether any measures to mitigate it will have any significant impact on the climate.
Ø "Placed bad politics and deliberate misinformation before good science and rational understanding."
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Are Gore and Newsweek's Climate Change Deniers Accusations Coordinated?
Excerpt: Is this a coordinated attack designed to incite anger in citizens that polls show are not as upset about this issue as the left and their media minions? < > Coincidence, or a coordinated campaign by the left to stifle the growing number of scientists around the world who are speaking out and writing articles refuting anthropogenic global warming theories whilst inciting the public's anger? After all, neither Gore nor Newsweek chose to address the billions of dollars being spent by global warming alarmists to elicit international hysteria concerning this issue, and how such funds dwarf what is going to skeptical scientists and writers to add a modicum of balance to the discussion. As Marc Morano, Communications Director for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), pointed out in his rebuttal to Newsweek's disgraceful piece, "proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, while skeptics have received a paltry $19 MILLION by comparison." < > Has the June failure of the G-8 to impose CO2 emissions caps, and the July failure of Gore's Live Earth concerts, scared alarmists about the future of their cause? Have polls consistently showing that Americans aren't getting nearly as hysterical about this issue as Gore and his sycophants in the media want discouraged believers to the point that a new tactic is being tested? < > What seems new is the timing of this Newsweek piece coincident with Gore's statements in Singapore, along with skeptics now being referred to as deniers. As such, this bears watching.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/08/are-gore-newsweek-s-climate-change-deniers-accusations-coordinated
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=38d98c0a-802a-23ad-48ac-d9f7facb61a7
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CNN: Newsweek accused of equating climate skeptics with Holocaust deniers (Note: this article appeared on CNN's website, hope for the mainstream media yet!)
Excerpt: Newsweek equates global warming skeptics with Holocaust deniers and accuses reputable scientists of being paid to create confusion in the face of consensus. Galileo is once again on trial. Even the supporters of global warming hype found the title of Newsweek's Aug. 13 attack on skeptics, "The Truth About Denial," offensive. The use of the word "denier" is deliberate, an attempt to paint as either crazy or corrupt what Al Gore has proclaimed as Truth. Reputable scientists have been accused by a major news magazine of being paid to lie. "Let's be blunt," said Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. "This allusion is an affront to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. This allusion has no place in the discourse on climate change. I say this as someone fully convinced of a significant human role in the behavior of the climate system."
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/IBD-0001-18734869.htm
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SFS/8-9-07
Global warming may well be real but it is not caused by humans. As your cover picture (August 14) suggests, climate change is caused mainly by the variable Sun and is therefore unstoppable. But your report never presents the readily available evidence; instead it questions the motivations of climate “skeptics” (or, better, “realists”) and contains much that is either false or misleading.
For example, President Bush never “withdrew from the Kyoto [climate] treaty”; he effectively continued the Clinton/Gore policy. The National Academy report of January 2000 does not reconcile the conflicting temperature trends of the surface and atmosphere – on the contrary. In the geological past, CO2 did not rise because of “increasing plant growth” -- the opposite is true. My Science & Environmental Policy Project does not try to “discredit evidence of global warming” -- we do challenge bad data and models. No member of my project ever attended a planning meeting with Exxon at the American Petroleum Institute (or anywhere else). In Senate testimony, I did raise doubts about current warming in the United States, based on then-available surface data; indeed, just last week an error was discovered in this data set, making 1934 the warmest year of the 20th century.
Finally, I am not much impressed by the putative “consensus” of 600 IPCC scientists (p.20). Or is it “800 climate researchers” (p. 25)? … from 130 nations, like Albania and Zimbabwe.
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S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, former director of the US Weather Satellite Service, and coauthor of “Unstoppable Global Warming” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), on the New York Times bestseller list.
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http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/BadScience_Newsweek/bad_news_for_newsweek.pdf
Strongly recommended -- all about Newsweek, floods, hurricanes, Read also
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/the_unruly_sunne_cannot_be_ruled_out_as_a_cause_of_recent_climate_variation.html
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Meteorologists Note Newsweek's reported error on hurricanes
Meteorologist Craig James from Michigan: Excerpt: Among many other errors, the Newsweek article erroneously states: The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. I have written posts on the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes here and here and you can read a new post about Atlantic hurricane frequency from Roger Pielke Sr. here. Basically, the article is a long, biased, closed-minded dissertation of a subject the authors cannot or chose not to understand, masquerading as news, with the intent of scaring the unchattering classes into becoming believers.
http://blogs.woodtv.com/?p=2411
From Meteorologist Joe DAleo on Newsweek's reported (formerly Weather Channel)
Excerpt: Note: The Newsweek story contained blatant errors including The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. This has been shown clearly by Dr. Bill Gray and Chris Landsea in stories and papers on this site to be very wrong.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/P3/
Newsweek climate article an 'editorial rag,' says warming skeptic
Excerpt: Marc Morano points out that even The New York Times concedes that current weather patterns are within natural climate variability. He states that the only thing "global warming" skeptics are denying is the uncertainty of computer models of the future predicting doom. "That's it. And the U.N. itself is now on record saying the models don't account for half the climate variability and aren't very reliable," he says. As for Newsweek's use of the term "global warming deniers," Morano says it is designed to equate skepticism of manmade global warming to questioning of the Holocaust.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/08/newsweek_climate_change_articl..php
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Aug 10, 2007 Letter to SEJ Exec Dir
Dear Ms Parke
I am happy to comply with yr request for information about my faculty status and recent scientific publications
1. Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
2. My most recent climate science publications
Singer, S.F. Climate Responses. Geotimes 51, No. 9, 6, Sept 2006
Singer, S.F. and D.T. Avery. Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1500 Years. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 2007. 260 pp.
D H Douglass, B D Pearson, S F Singer. “Altitude Dependence of Atmospheric Temperature Trends: Climate models versus observations” Geophys. Res. Letters (09 July 2004), Vol. 31, No. 13, L13208, 10.1029/2004GL020103
D H Douglass, B D Pearson, S F Singer, P.C. Knappenberger; P.J. Michaels, “Disparity of tropospheric and surface temperature trends: New evidence” Geophys. Res. Letters (09 July 2004), Vol. 31, No. 13, L13207, 10.1029/2004GL020212
My most recent publication in planetary science:
S. F. Singer. "Origin of the Martian Satellites Phobos and Deimos" Meteoritics & Planetary Science 42:142 Aug 2007 (Suppl)
3. The SEJ website states that SEPP "actually does receive funds from oil and coal interests, according to Ross Gelbspan, SourceWatch, Wikipedia "
I would like to see documentation for this statement that goes beyond citing these three suspect sources. We maintain meticulous records of all income; they show only private donations, some foundation grants, book sales, and speaking fees -- none from "oil and coal interests."
Sincerely,
S Fred Singer
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Dear Ms Parke
Tom Bearden of The NewsHour has called my attention to yr website and asked for my comments.
As you can see from my response (below), every statement about me is either untrue or misleading.
I am appalled by the bias shown here, but even more so by the lack of journalistic ethics.
I don't know who is responsible for this libelous material, but as its Executive Director would you please tell me how SEJ plans to rectify this matter.
Sincerely,
Fred Singer
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5. Negative feedback? Warming might thin heat-trapping clouds
News release 8/9/2007 http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875
The widely accepted (albeit unproven) theory that manmade global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping clouds is challenged this month in new research from The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Instead of creating more clouds, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center.
That was not what he expected to find: "All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases," he said. "That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space."
The results of this research were published today in the American Geophysical Union's "Geophysical Research Letters" on-line edition. The paper was co-authored by UAHuntsville's Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. W. Danny Braswell, and Dr. Justin Hnilo of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.
"While low clouds have a predominantly cooling effect due to their shading of sunlight, most cirrus clouds have a net warming effect on the Earth," Spencer said. With high altitude ice clouds their infrared heat trapping exceeds their solar shading effect.
In the tropics most cirrus-type clouds flow out of the upper reaches of thunderstorm clouds. As the Earth's surface warms - due to either manmade greenhouse gases or natural fluctuations in the climate system - more water evaporates from the surface. Since more evaporation leads to more precipitation, most climate researchers expected increased cirrus cloudiness to follow warming.
"To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent," Spencer said. "The big question that no one can answer right now is whether this enhanced cooling mechanism applies to global warming."
The only way to see how these new findings impact global warming forecasts is to include them in computerized climate models. "The role of clouds in global warming is widely agreed to be pretty uncertain," Spencer said. "Right now, all climate models predict that clouds will amplify warming. I'm betting that if the climate models' 'clouds' were made to behave the way we see these clouds behave in nature, it would substantially reduce the amount of climate change the models predict for the coming decades."
The UAHuntsville research team used 30- to 60-day tropical temperature fluctuations - known as "intraseasonal oscillations" - as proxies for global warming. "Fifteen years ago, when we first started monitoring global temperatures with satellites, we noticed these big temperature fluctuations in the tropics," Spencer said. "What amounts to a decade of global warming routinely occurs in just a few weeks in the tropical atmosphere. Then, as if by flipping a switch, the rapid warming is replaced by strong cooling. It now looks like the change in cirrus cloud coverage is the major reason for this switch from warming to cooling."
The team analyzed six years of data from four instruments aboard three NASA and NOAA satellites. The researchers tracked precipitation amounts, air and sea surface temperatures, high and low altitude cloud cover, reflected sunlight, and infrared energy escaping out to space. When they tracked the daily evolution of a composite of fifteen of the strongest intraseasonal oscillations they found that although rainfall and air temperatures would be rising, the amount of infrared energy being trapped by the cloudy areas would start to decrease rapidly as the air warmed. This unexpected behavior was traced to the decrease in cirrus cloud cover.
The new results raise questions about some current theories regarding precipitation, clouds and the efficiency with which weather systems convert water vapor into rainfall. These are significant issues in the global warming debate. "Global warming theory says warming will generally be accompanied by more rainfall," Spencer said. "Everyone just assumed that more rainfall means more high altitude clouds. That would be your first guess and, since we didn't have any data to suggest otherwise ...."
There are significant gaps in the scientific understanding of precipitation systems and their interactions with the climate, he said. "At least 80 percent of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and those are largely under the control of precipitation systems. "Until we understand how precipitation systems change with warming, I don't believe we can know how much of our current warming is manmade. Without that knowledge, we can't predict future climate change with any degree of certainty."
6. CLOUDING THE ISSUE
The haze of pollution called the "Asian Brown Cloud," caused by wood and dung burned for fuel, may be doing more harm than the tailpipes of our SUVs, according to a new study published in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature.
Researchers led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, launched three unmanned aircraft last March from the Maldives island of Hanimadhoo to fly through the Brown Cloud at various altitudes. A total of 18 missions were flown to explore the blanket of soot, dust and smoke that at times is two miles thick and covers an area about the size of the United States. According to the researchers:
o The cloud of soot and particulate matter boosted the effect of solar heating on the surrounding air by as much as 50 percent.
o These findings also may help to explain the rapid melting among the 46,000 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and why the Himalayan glaciers have been retreating since at least 1780.
o This phenomenon also might help explain why carbon dioxide emissions and global temperatures don't track very well, if at all.
The Asian Brown Cloud was first discovered by Ramanathan in 1999. He grew up near Madras, India, where his mother, like millions of other Indian homemakers, cooked with dried cow dung -- a plentiful, and renewable, source of cheap fuel that was a good source of heat. Such pollution, because it contains the residue from hundreds of millions of dung-fueled cooking fires and inefficient wood and coal furnaces, carries an unusually large amount of soot.
S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, finds it "ironic that much of (this) pollution could be avoided by the use of cleaner fossil fuels, like gas, oil, and even coal, all of which release CO2."
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Source: Editorial, "Clouding The Issue," Investor's Business Daily, August 10, 2007. Courtesy: NCPA
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=271551822800315
Roger Pielke, Sr., on Holland-Webster paper in Phil Trans Roy Soc 2007
“My conclusions from this exercise
1. Given how crucially the results of HW2007 depend upon a yet-to-be completed reanalysis, aggressive and loud public claims to absolute certainty (in any direction) are way overstated.
2. Extension of a still-uncertain analysis of trends to claims of conclusive attribution to greenhouse gas emission may be supported by other available research but is not at all by HW2007, at least not according to anything even remotely resembling the IPCC’s approach to detection and attribution. I doubt that the detection threshold has been achieved, pending a proper uncertainty analysis.
3. Was Landsea justified in claiming that HW 2007 were “sloppy”? HW could of course easily resolve this by releasing their dataset for all to see (don’t hold your breath, by we shall see), but my analysis suggests pretty strongly that they did not follow the procedures that they described in the paper, exactly as alleged by Landsea. For a paper broadcast around the world as being policy relevant, this is unfortunate, to say the least.
4. Should the American public have new and increased concerns about increasing hurricane landfalls, as compared to recent years? Maybe, but HW2007 do not make this case. In fact, their paper does not even discuss landfalls!
5. Until the research community can satisfactorily explain the relationship of basin-wide activity with landfall rates, any suggestion that landfalls will continue to increase (or even decrease!) in future years remains speculative at best and at worst, a dramatic overstatement of what science can provide at this time. There is marginal skill in forecasting basin-wide activity on a seasonal basis, and no skill at predicting landfalls at any timescale (greater than 5 days;-). I welcome corrections if this assessment is incorrect (but I don’t think that it is).
6. And it probably needs to be said that it is already well documented that there has been a dramatic increase in activity 1995-2006 as compared to 1970-1994. This is widely accepted and its causes are debated. But it is not the focus of HW2007 which claims to discern a heretofore unseen trend from 1905-2005.
Bottom line? Landsea was absolutely correct about the sloppiness, which is inexcusable. The jury is still out on trends, though uncertainty seems sure to persist for a while, despite the loud and aggressive claims to the contrary.