See this page in Red and Black: Climate Change
The cyclic nature of Earth's climate
"Weather is climate. More specifically, aggregations of weather are climate.
Means, averages, and distributions of daily weather comprise climate."
See Actually, Weather Is Climate
(William M. Briggs, Statistician & Consultant. Jan. 22, '10)
Climate is long-range weather, it is a description of the average or prevailing weather in each season along the years.
Climate varies widely among different regions on Earth. Also, in some regions it varies more or less widely with the seasons.
Predicting the weather for a particular region, even for a few days in advance, is one of the most complex problems in science. One basis for these predictions is that weather changes slowly, so tomorrow's weather will be similar to today's weather and so on (but with less certainty the further we go on, because the weather is mathematically chaotic). Also, that weather tends to repeat seasonally, for each region, changing slowly with the years.
The most obvious local cycle in the weather pattern is diurnal, basically controlled by the Sun. The warmest time of the day is usually after noon, after receiving the highest energy influx. The coldest is usually before dawn, after cooling all night.
The second cycle in importance is yearly, also controlled by the amount of energy received from the Sun. The warmest days occur in the summer and the coldest in the winter, when one hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun while the other is tilted away. The axis of the Earth is currently tilted 23.5° in respect to its orbital plane.
Then there is the cycle of activity of the Sun itself, some 11 years, but not very constant in length or intensity.
Some of the effects of the Solar activity on the Earth's atmosphere are now just beginning to be studied.
The reconstructions of ancient climates reveal a close correlation between Solar activity and temperatures on Earth.
The correlation between Solar activity plus oceanic heat transport and temperatures
is much more closer than the correlation between the abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2) and temperatures.
At the beginning of 2011, we were near a minimum of the Solar Cycle 23 (in December 2008) that was "late to arrive",
the next Solar maximum is now expected to occur in May 2013.
See Solar Cycle Progression and Prediction Center
(NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center)
Scientists studying sunspots for the past 2 decades have concluded
that the magnetic field that triggers their formation has been steadily declining.
If the current trend continues, by 2016 the sun's face may become spotless and remain that way for decades
- a phenomenon that in the 17th century coincided with a prolonged period of cooling on Earth.
The last solar minimum should have ended in 2010, but something peculiar has been happening.
Although solar minimums normally last about 16 months, Solar Cycle 23 stretched over 26 months - the longest in a century.
One reason, according to a paper submitted to the International Astronomical Union Symposium No. 273, an online colloquium,
Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields
(Matthew Penn, William Livingston, 3 Sep. 2010), is that the magnetic field strength of sunspots appears to be waning.
The phenomenon has happened before.
Sunspots disappeared almost entirely between 1645 and 1715 during a period called the Maunder Minimum,
which coincided with decades of lower-than-normal temperatures in Europe nicknamed the Little Ice Age.
But Livingston cautions that the zero-sunspot prediction could be premature.
"It may not happen," he says. "Only the passage of time will tell whether the solar cycle will pick up."
See Say Goodbye to Sunspots?
(Phil Berardelli, ScienceNOW, 14 September 2010).
For a discussion, see
The sun is still in a slump - still not conforming to NOAA "consensus" forecasts
(Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That?, January 5, 2011).
In the Sun, a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles
say that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years,
according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum,
independent studies of the solar interior, visible surface, and the corona
indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all.
See
What's Down With The Sun? - Major Drop In Solar Activity Predicted
(NSO Press Release, June 14, 2011).
For a discussion, see
"All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while."
(Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That?, June 14, 2011).
"The Maunder Minimum:
Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century.
Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715
(JPEG image, 38 Kb).
Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years,
the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented.
This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the "Little Ice Age"
when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes.
There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past.
The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research."
See The Sunspot Cycle
(Solar Physics, Marshall Space Flight Center)
Extraterrestrial Climate Influence (The Svensmark Hypothesis):
"Scientists have only recently come to suspect that cosmic rays have an important influence on Earth's climate.
Cosmic rays are highly energetic charged particles that originate from various sources in outer space."
"Scientists have found a link between cosmic ray levels and thunderstorms.
There is also a positive correlation between cosmic ray flux (CRF) and low-altitude cloud formation."
"Ions created in the troposphere by cosmic rays could provide a mechanism for cloud formation."
"The influence of galactic cosmic ray modulation is strongest on low-level clouds."
"When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is stronger and as a result fewer global cosmic rays (GCR) arrive in the vicinity of Earth."
"The variations of the cosmic ray flux, as predicted from the galactic model and as observed from the iron meteorites,
are in sync with the occurrence of ice age epochs on Earth. The agreement is both in period and in phase."
"The inverse relationship between temperature and CRF is clear; when CRF rises, temperature falls, when CRF drops off, temperature climbs."
"The evidence of correlations between paleoclimate records and solar and cosmic ray activity indicators,
suggests that extraterrestrial phenomena are responsible for climatic variability on time scales ranging from days to millennia."
"The movement of the solar system in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy
is responsible for changes in the amount of cosmic rays impacting Earth's atmosphere."
"Cosmic Ray Flux variations explain more than two-thirds of the variance in the reconstructed temperature,
making CRF variability the dominant climate driver over geologic time scales."
"It has been known for some time that a 62 ±3 million-year cycle in fossil diversity has persisted over the past 542 million years."
"Recently, it has been proposed that the cycle is caused by modulation of CRF due to the solar system's vertical oscillation in the galaxy,
which has a period of around 64 million years."
"Decadal - Cosmic ray muons regulated by the Solar cycle. This accounts for temperature variability in sync with the 11 year sunspot cycle."
"Hundreds to thousands of years - Solar regulation of cosmic rays plus changes in Solar irradiance.
This variability includes historical climate change as witnessed in the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period."
"Tens to hundreds of thousands of years - The Croll-Milankovitch cycles that combine Earth's attitudinal and orbital variations.
This variability drives the glacial-interglacial cycles during ice ages."
"Millions to hundreds of millions of years - The solar system's transit of the galactic spiral arms,
causing variation in overall cosmic ray intensity.
This variability regulates the cycles of ice ages and hot-house periods."
See The Resilient Earth, Chapter 11, Cosmic Rays (.pdf Downloadable Book. Doug L. Hoffman & Allen Simmons, 2008 - Free)
See The Svensmark Hypothesis
(Calder's Updates, Nigel Calder)
- "No, you mustn't say what it means!"
(CERN chief forbids "interpretation" of CLOUD results, July 17 '11)
See Cosmic Rays and Climate (Prof. Nir J. Shaviv, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
See Indirect Solar Forcing of Climate by Galactic Cosmic Rays: An Observational Estimate (Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH, May 19 '11)
See Probing the cosmic-ray-climate link (physicsworld.com, Institute of Physics, Aug 24, 2011)
See CERN's CLOUD experiment provides unprecedented insight into cloud formation (CERN Press Release, Aug 25 '11)
See CERN Finds "Significant" Cosmic Ray Cloud Effect (GWPF, Dr. David Whitehouse, Aug 25, 2011)
See Henrik Svensmark: The Cosmic-Ray/Cloud Seeding Hypothesis Is Converging With Reality (GWPF, Dr. David Whitehouse, Sep 2, 2011)
See Cosmic Rays vs. CO2: The Battle for Climate Change Primacy (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso)
See The Other Climate Theory (The Wall Street Journal, Anne Jolis, Sep 7, 2011)
Do clouds disappear when cosmic rays get weaker?:
Calder's Updates, May 3, 2010
"The Sun makes fantastic natural experiments" Henrik Svensmark says, "that allow us to test our ideas about its effects on the Earth's climate". Most dramatic are the events called Forbush decreases. Ejections of gas from the Sun, carrying magnetic fields, can suddenly cut the influx of cosmic rays coming to the Earth from exploded stars.
According to the Svensmark hypothesis, cosmic rays seed the formation of low clouds, so there should be a reduction in the Earth’s low cloud cover in the aftermath of a Forbush decrease.
With the right tracking skills, the Copenhagen team confirmed all their expectations about the Forbush decreases.
Combined data for the five strongest Forbush decreases since 1998 show a loss of fine aerosols from the atmosphere, especially about 5 days after the cosmic ray minimum (red curve). Within a few days after that, three different sets of data from satellites revealed the loss of low, wet clouds, with clouds over the oceans holding about 7% less liquid water than they did before the events. Dates of the five Forbush minima, ranked in order of the downturn in ionization of the lower air, compared with the overall variation in the course of a solar cycle, were 31/10/2003 (119%), 19/1/2005 (83%), 13/9/2005 (75%), 16/7/2000 (70%) and 12/4/2001 (64%).
The first of the graphics shows a temporary shortage of fine aerosols, chemical specks in the air that normally grow until water vapour can condense on them, so seeding the liquid water droplets of low-level clouds. The remaining three graphs display the observable loss of the clouds that would have been seeded if the aerosols had survived to do their job. Three different kinds of satellite observations tell the same story.
Cosmic rays continuously promote the formation of micro-clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules, but initially these are far too small to be detectable by remote observation. After growing routinely over a number of days the invisible specks floating in the air influence the normal colour of sunlight as seen from the ground, by scattering away its violet light. Conversely, a shortage of fine aerosols after a shortage of cosmic rays should make the Sun appear abnormally bright in at the violet end of the spectrum.
As the graphs above show, all of these observational data sets showed much the same pattern of events after the strongest Forbush decreases since 1998, namely a decrease in liquid water clouds that reached its lowest point six to nine days after the minimum count of cosmic rays.
As for the magnitude of the impact on cloud cover, it was huge. A 7% decrease in cloud water seen by SSM/I translates into 3 billion tonnes of liquid water vanishing from the sky. The water remains there in vapour form, but unlike cloud droplets it does not block sunlight trying to warm the ocean. After the same five Forbush decreases, the extent of liquid-water clouds measured by MODIS fell on average by 4%, while ISCCP showed 5% less cloud below 3200 metres over the ocean.
From solar activity to cosmic ray ionization to aerosols and liquid-water clouds, a causal chain appears to operate on a global scale.
Although they are too short-lived to have a lasting effect on the climate, the Forbush decreases dramatize the cosmic climate mechanism that works more patiently during the 11-year solar cycle. When the Sun becomes more active, the decline in low-altitude cosmic radiation is greater than that seen in most Forbush events, and the loss of low cloud cover persists for long enough to warm the world. That explains the alternations of warming and cooling seen in the lower atmosphere and in the oceans during solar cycles. And the overall increase in solar activity during the 20th Century implies a loss of low clouds sufficient to explain most of the "global warming".
See
Do clouds disappear when cosmic rays get weaker?
(Nigel Calder, Calder's Updates, May 3, 2010)
See also Center for Sun-Climate Research (Technical University of Denmark)
See also Center for Sun-Climate Research - Publications (Technical University of Denmark)
See also Cosmic Rays and Climate (arXiv:0804.1938v1, Dr. Jasper Kirkby, 11 April 2008, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)
See also CO2 and climate change - v7 (Dr. Noor van Andel, 14-02-2011, climategate.nl, .pdf)
It has been proposed that galactic cosmic rays may influence the Earth's climate by affecting cloud formation.
If changes in cloudiness play a part in climate change, their effect changes sign in Antarctica.
Satellite data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE)
are here used to calculate the changes in surface temperatures at all latitudes,
due to small percentage changes in cloudiness.
The results match the observed contrasts in temperature changes, globally and in Antarctica.
Evidently clouds do not just respond passively to climate changes but take an active part in the forcing,
in accordance with changes in the solar magnetic field that vary the cosmic-ray flux.
See The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays (Henrik Svensmark, December 14, 2006)
Cloud tops have a high albedo and exert their cooling effect by scattering back into the cosmos much of the sunlight
that could otherwise warm the surface.
But the snows on the Antarctic ice sheets are dazzlingly white, with a higher albedo than the cloud tops.
There, extra cloud cover warms the surface, and less cloudiness cools it.
Satellite measurements show the warming effect of clouds on Antarctica,
and meteorologists at far southern latitudes confirm it by observation.
Greenland too has an ice sheet, but it is smaller and not so white.
And while conditions in Greenland are coupled to the general climate of the northern hemisphere,
Antarctica is largely isolated by vortices in the ocean and the air.
The cosmic-ray and cloud-forcing hypothesis therefore predicts
that temperature changes in Antarctica should be opposite in sign to changes in temperature in the rest of the world.
This is exactly what is observed, in a well-known phenomenon that some geophysicists have called the polar see-saw,
but for which "the Antarctic climate anomaly" seems a better name.
See Cosmoclimatology (Professor Henrik Svensmark, A&G, 2007, .pdf)
Celestial Origin of the Climate Oscillations:
Nicola Scafetta
"The climate system is clearly characterized by a 60-year cycle. We have seen statistically compatible periods of cooling during 1880-1910, 1940-1970, 2000-(2030 ?) and warming during 1850-1880, 1910-1940, 1970-2000."
[See HADCRUT3 Unadjusted global monthly mean temperature anomalies 1850-2011.92 (°C) + linear trends (Wood for Trees - Observatorio ARVAL)]
"On secular, millenarian and larger time scales astronomical oscillations and solar changes drive climate variations.
Shaviv's theory (2003) can explain the large 145 Myr climate oscillations during the last 600 million years.
Milankovic's theory (1941) can explain the multi-millennial climate oscillations observed during the last 1000 kyr.
Climate oscillations with periods of 2500, 1500, and 1000 years
during the last 10,000 year (the Holocene) are correlated to equivalent solar cycles that caused the Minoan,
Roman, Medieval and Modern warm periods (Bond et al., 2001; Kerr, 2001).
Finally, several other authors found that multisecular solar oscillations caused bi-secular little ice ages (for example:
the Spörer, Maunder, Dalton minima) during the last 1000 years
(for example: Eddy, 1976; Eichler et al., 2009; Scafetta and West, 2007; Scafetta, 2009, 2010).
Herein, we have found empirical evidences that the climate oscillations within the secular scale
are very likely driven by astronomical cycles, too.
Cycles with periods of 10-11, 12, 15, 20-22, 30 and 60 years are present in all major surface temperature records since 1850,
and can be easily linked to the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.
The 11 and 22-year cycles are the well-known Schwabe and Hale solar cycles.
Other faster cycles with periods between 5 and 10 years are in common between the temperature records and the astronomical cycles.
Long-term lunar cycles induce a 9.1-year cycle in the temperature records and probably other cycles,
including an 18.6-year cycle in some regions (McKinnell and Crawford, 2007).
A quasi-60 year cycle has been found in numerous multi-secular climatic records,
and it is even present in the traditional Chinese, Tibetan and Tamil calendars, which are arranged in major 60-year cycles.
The physical mechanisms that would explain this result are still unknown."
See Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications (Nicola Scafetta, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951-970 (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2010.04.015, .pdf)
See A shared frequency set between the historical mid-latitude aurora records and the global surface temperature (Nicola Scafetta, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, in press, 6 October 2011. DOI: 10.1016/j.jastp.2011.10.013, .pdf)
See The Milky Way Galaxy's Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection (Nir J. Shaviv)
Climate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Climatic Data:
Craig Loehle and Nicola Scafetta, 2011
"The climate change attribution problem is addressed using empirical decomposition.
Cycles in solar motion and activity of 60 and 20 years were used to develop an empirical model of Earth temperature variations.
The model was fit to the Hadley global temperature data up to 1950
(time period before anthropogenic emissions became the dominant forcing mechanism), and then extrapolated from 1951 to 2010.
The residuals showed an approximate linear upward trend of about 0.66°C/century from 1942 to 2010.
Herein we assume that this residual upward warming has been mostly induced by anthropogenic emissions, urbanization and land use change.
The warming observed before 1942 is relatively small and is assumed to have been mostly naturally induced.
The resulting full natural plus anthropogenic model fits the entire 160 year record very well.
Residual analysis does not provide any evidence for a substantial cooling effect due to sulfate aerosols from 1940 to 1970.
The cooling observed during that period may be due to a natural 60-year cycle,
which is visible in the global temperature since 1850 and has been observed also in numerous multisecular climatic records.
New solar activity proxy models are developed
that suggest a mechanism for both the 60-year climate cycle and a portion of the long-term warming trend.
Our results suggest that because current models underestimate the strength of natural multidecadal cycles in the temperature records,
the anthropogenic contribution to climate change since 1850 should be less than half of that previously claimed by the IPCC.
About 60% of the warming observed from 1970 to 2000
was very likely caused by the above natural 60-year climatic cycle during its warming phase.
A 21st Century forecast suggests that climate may remain approximately steady until 2030-2040,
and may at most warm 0.5-1.0°C by 2100 at the estimated 0.66°C/century anthropogenic warming rate,
which is about 3.5 times smaller than the average 2.3°C/century anthropogenic warming rate projected by the IPCC
up to the first decades of the 21st century. However, additional multisecular natural cycles may cool the climate further."
See Climate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Climatic Data (Craig Loehle and Nicola Scafetta, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 2011, Pp. 74-86, DOI:10.2174/1874282301105010074)
Testing an Astronomically Based Decadal-Scale Empirical Harmonic Climate Model vs. the IPCC (2007) General Circulation Climate Models:
Nicola Scafetta, PhD. 06 January 2012
"We compare the performance of a recently proposed empirical climate model based on astronomical harmonics
against all CMIP3 available general circulation climate models (GCM) used by the IPCC (2007)
to interpret the 20th century global surface temperature.
The proposed astronomical empirical climate model assumes that the climate is resonating with,
or synchronized to a set of natural harmonics that, in previous works (Scafetta, 2010b, 2011b),
have been associated to the solar system planetary motion, which is mostly determined by Jupiter and Saturn.
We show that the GCMs fail to reproduce the major decadal and multidecadal oscillations
found in the global surface temperature record from 1850 to 2011.
On the contrary, the proposed harmonic model (which herein uses cycles with 9.1, 10-10.5, 20-21, 60-62 year periods)
is found to well reconstruct the observed climate oscillations from 1850 to 2011,
and it is shown to be able to forecast the climate oscillations from 1950 to 2011 using the data covering the period 1850-1950,
and vice versa.
The 9.1-year cycle is shown to be likely related to a decadal Soli/Lunar tidal oscillation,
while the 10-10.5, 20-21 and 60-62 year cycles are synchronous to solar and heliospheric planetary oscillations.
We show that the IPCC GCM's claim that all warming observed from 1970 to 2000 has been anthropogenically induced
is erroneous because of the GCM failure in reconstructing the quasi 20-year and 60-year climatic cycles.
Finally, we show how the presence of these large natural cycles can be used
to correct the IPCC projected anthropogenic warming trend for the 21st century.
By combining this corrected trend with the natural cycles,
we show that the temperature may not significantly increase during the next 30 years
mostly because of the negative phase of the 60-year cycle.
If multisecular natural cycles (which according to some authors have significantly contributed to the observed 1700-2010 warming
and may contribute to an additional natural cooling by 2100) are ignored,
the same IPCC projected anthropogenic emissions would imply a global warming by about 0.3-1.2°C by 2100,
contrary to the IPCC 1.0-3.6°C projected warming.
The results of this paper reinforce previous claims
that the relevant physical mechanisms that explain the detected climatic cycles are still missing in the current GCMs
and that climate variations at the multidecadal scales are astronomically induced and, in first approximation, can be forecasted."
See Testing an Astronomically Based Decadal-Scale Empirical Harmonic Climate Model vs. the IPCC (2007) General Circulation Climate Models (Nicola Scafetta, Science and Public Policy Institute. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2011.12.005)
For updated graphics and discussion see Scafetta on his latest paper: Harmonic climate model versus the IPCC general circulation climate models (Nicola Scafetta, Watts Up With That, January 9, 2012)
The 'Variable Sun':
For some years now, an unorthodox idea has been gaining favor among astronomers. It contradicts old teachings and unsettles thoughtful observers, especially climatologists.
"The Sun", explains Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC, "is a variable star".
"It's not even 11 years", says Guhathakurtha. "The cycle ranges in length from 9 to 12 years. Some cycles are intense, with many sunspots and solar flares; others are mild, with relatively little solar activity. In the 17th century, during a period called the 'Maunder Minimum', the cycle appeared to stop altogether for about 70 years and no one knows why."
There is no need to go so far back in time, however, to find an example of the cycle's unpredictability. Right now the sun is climbing out of a century-class solar minimum that almost no one anticipated.
"The depth of the solar minimum in 2008-2009 really took us by surprise", says sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "It highlights how far we still have to go to successfully forecast solar activity."
Astronomers were once so convinced of the Sun's constancy, they called the irradiance of the sun "the solar constant", and they set out to measure it as they would any constant of Nature. By definition, the solar constant is the amount of solar energy deposited at the top of Earth's atmosphere in units of watts per meter-squared. All wavelengths of radiation are included - radio, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and so on. The approximate value of the solar constant is 1,361 W/m2.
"The 'Solar constant' is an oxymoron", says Judith Lean of the Naval Research Lab. "Satellite data show that the Sun's total irradiance rises and falls with the sunspot cycle by a significant amount."
At solar maximum, the sun is about 0.1% brighter than it is at solar minimum. That may not sound like much, but consider the following: A 0.1% change in 1,361 W/m2 equals 1.4 Watts/m2. Averaging this number over the spherical Earth and correcting for Earth's reflectivity yields 0.24 Watts for every square meter of our planet.
"Add it all up and you get a lot of energy", says Lean. "How this might affect weather and climate is a matter of - at times passionate - debate."
From Solar Dynamics Observatory: The 'Variable Sun' Mission [NASA Science. February 5, 2010]
See Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) [Launched on January 2010. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
See SDO Mission 2009's Channel [YouTube]
The Sun Defines the Climate:
Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc.
Head of Space Research Laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory,
Head of the Russian/Ukrainian Joint Project Astrometria
Experts of the United Nations in regular reports publish data said to show that the Earth is approaching a catastrophic global warming, caused by increasing emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is "not guilty" and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop.
Life on earth completely depends on Solar radiation, the ultimate source of energy for natural processes. For a long time it was thought that the luminosity of the Sun never changes, and for this reason the quantity of Solar energy received per second over one square meter above the atmosphere at the distance of the Earth from the Sun (149,597,892 km), was named the Solar Constant.
Until 1978, precise measurements of the value of the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) were not available. But according to indirect data, namely the established major climate variations of the Earth in recent millennia, one must doubt the invariance of its value.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, German and Swiss astronomers Heinrich Schwabe and Rudolf Wolf established that the number of spots on the surface of the Sun periodically changes, diminishing from a maximum to a minimum, and then growing again, over a time frame on the order of 11 years. Wolf introduced an index ("W") of the relative number of sunspots, computed as the sum of 10 times number of sunspot groups plus the total number of spots in all groups. This number has been regularly measured since 1849. Drawing on the work of professional astronomers and the observations of amateurs (which are of uncertain reliability) Wolf worked out a reconstruction of monthly values from 1749 as well as annual values from 1700. Today, the reconstruction of this time series stretches back to 1611. It has an eleven-year cycle of recurrence as well as other cycles related to onset and development of individual sunspot groups: changes in the fraction of the solar surface occupied by faculae, the frequency of prominences, and other phenomena in the solar chromosphere and corona.
Analyzing data on solar activity, the American astrophysicist John Eddy in 1976 noted a correlation between periods of significant change in the number of spots in the past millennium and large changes in the climate of the Earth, changes that have profoundly influenced the life of peoples and states, initiating economic and demographic crises. Later, St. Petersburg geophysicist Eugene Borisenkov showed (1988) that in each of 18 deep minima of solar activity of the Maunder Minimum type, minima which have occurred about every 200 years for the last 7,500 years, there have been periods of deep temperature decline, while in the periods of high sunspot maxima, there have been periods of global warming. Such changes in the climate of the Earth could be caused only by lasting and significant changes in the Sun, because there was absolutely no industrial effect on nature in those times. This supports the idea that in the bicentennial periods of maximum levels of solar activity, the TSI has always substantially increased, and it has noticeably decreased in periods of minima.
Thus, not 11-year, but bicentennial cycles of solar variation are the dominant factor in climate variations that last for decades: temperatures in the ocean-atmosphere system, the physical parameters of the Earth’s surface and its albedo, concentrations of greenhouse gases (primarily water vapor and carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere. Also, a quite important influence on climate is exerted by the world ocean, which possesses large thermal inertia and serves as the principal receiver and storage of solar energy.
A global increase in temperature has also occurred on Mars. NASA researchers, after tracing changes on its surface from 1999 until 2005, discovered melting ice at Mars’ South Pole and warming of the Martian climate, a natural event that occurred without any contribution by Martians or greenhouse effect driven by Martians. Analogous processes have also been observed on Jupiter, Neptune, Triton, Pluto and other planets of the solar system. These can only be the direct consequences of the action of one and the same factor - the prolonged and extraordinarily high level of the energy radiated by the Sun.
Warming on Mars did not occur as a result of change in the shape of its orbit and inclination of its axis of rotation, as is frequently asserted: these processes occur on time frames of tens of thousands of years, and therefore in this negligible time frame (six years!) in no way could they affect the climate.
Published in the Russian journal "Nauka i Zhizn" ("Science and Life"), 2009, N1, pp. 34-42.
See The Sun Defines the Climate (Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, 2009. Translated from Russian by Lucy Hancock, .pdf)
See also SL-200 Solar Limbograph (permanently mounted onboard the International Space Station)
See also Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says (Kate Ravilious, National Geographic News, February 28, 2007)
Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age:
Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc.
Head of Space Research Laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory,
Head of the Russian/Ukrainian Joint Project Astrometria
Temporal changes in the power of the longwave radiation of the system Earth-atmosphere emitted to space
always lag behind changes in the power of absorbed solar radiation due to slow change of its enthalpy.
That is why the debit and credit parts of the average annual energy budget of the terrestrial globe with its air and water envelope
are practically always in an unbalanced state.
Average annual balance of the thermal budget of the system Earth-atmosphere during long time period
will reliably determine the course and value of both an energy excess accumulated by the Earth
or the energy deficit in the thermal budget which, with account for data of the TSI forecast,
can define and predict well in advance the direction and amplitude of the forthcoming climate changes.
From early 90s we observe bicentennial decrease in both the TSI and the portion of its energy absorbed by the Earth.
The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget
which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014.
Due to increase of albedo and decrease of the greenhouse gases atmospheric concentration
the absorbed portion of solar energy and the influence of the greenhouse effect will additionally decline.
The influence of the consecutive chain of feedback effects which can lead to additional drop of temperature
will surpass the influence of the TSI decrease.
The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042±11,
that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years - in 2055±11.
From early 1990s the values of both eleven-year and bicentennial components of TSI variations are decreasing at accelerating (at present) rate (Fig. 2), and hence a fraction of TSI absorbed by the Earth is declining at practically the same rate.
Pulkovo Observatory of the RAS
Pulkovskoye shosse 65, St. Petersburg, 196140, Russia
Published in the journal Applied Physics Research.
Received: September 22, 2011 Accepted: October 9, 2011 Published: February 1, 2012
doi:10.5539/apr.v4n1p178 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/apr.v4n1p178
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Applied Physics Research, ISSN 1916-9639 (Print), ISSN 1916-9647 (Online)
Copyright © Canadian Center of Science and Education
See Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age (Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, 2012, Applied Physics Research)
The Croll-Milankovitch Cycles:
"Variations in the intensity and timing of heat from the Sun are the most likely cause of glacial/interglacial cycles. This variability is partially driven by changes in the Sun's output, but is affected more strongly by variations in Earth's orbit."
"There are three major components of Earth's orbit about the Sun that contribute to changes in our climate.
These are, the Precession of the Equinoxes, and changes in Axial Obliquity and Orbital Eccentricity.
The full cycle of equinox precession takes 25,800 years to complete.
Presently, Earth is closest to the Sun in January and farther away in July.
Presently Earth's tilt is 23.5°, but the 41,000 year cycle varies from 22.1° to 24.5°.
Earth's orbit goes from measurably elliptical to nearly circular in a cycle that takes around 100,000 years."
"Individually, each of the three cycles affect insolation patterns. When taken together, they can partially cancel or reinforce each other in complicated ways."
See The Resilient Earth, Chapter 9, Variations In Earth's Orbit (.pdf Downloadable Book. Doug L. Hoffman & Allen Simmons, 2008 - Free)
Also see Milutin Milankovitch (1879-1958) (NASA Earth Observatory)
Oceanic Climate Influence:
El Niño and La Niña are natural oscillations of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific
that have important consequences for weather around the globe.
Current science can detect them, but not predict them in the long term.
They are part of a phenomenon known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO),
a continual but irregular cycle (of about 3 to 7 years) of shifts in ocean and atmospheric conditions that affect the global climate.
El Niño is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific,
as opposed to La Niña, which is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.
Among these consequences is increased rainfall across the southern tier of the US and in Peru, which has caused destructive flooding,
and drought in the West Pacific, sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia.
El Niño events tend to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity, while La Niña events tend to enhance it.
In July 2009 the Journal of Geophysical Research published our paper titled
"The Influence of the Southern Oscillation on Tropospheric Temperature".
We showed that the Southern Oscillation Index
(SOI, calculated according to the Troup method, was a good indicator of global average lower tropospheric temperature 7 months later
except when volcanic eruptions around the Pacific Ocean caused cooling.
See Our ENSO - temperature paper of 2009 and the aftermath (2 Feb 2011, Dr. John McLean)
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a natural long-term temperature fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean.
The PDO waxes and wanes approximately every 20 to 30 years,
has a dominant impact on hurricane variability in the Pacific and probably influences the ENSO.
The "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability. While the two climate oscillations have similar spatial climate fingerprints, they have very different behavior in time.
From Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) (NOAA - National Climatic Data Center)
Two main characteristics distinguish PDO from El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO): first, 20th century PDO "events" persisted for 20-to-30 years, while typical ENSO events persisted for 6 to 18 months; second, the climatic fingerprints of the PDO are most visible in the North Pacific/North American sector, while secondary signatures exist in the tropics - the opposite is true for ENSO.
Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: "cool" PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while "warm" PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990's. A "cool" PDO regime has prevailed after 1998.
Causes for the PDO are not currently known. Likewise, the potential predictability for this climate oscillation is not known.
See What is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation?
(NOAA - NWS Western Region Headquarters).
See The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
(Nathan Mantua, University of Washington).
See The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
(Global Warming Science).
A simple climate model forced by satellite-observed changes in the Earth's radiative budget associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
is shown to mimic the major features of global average temperature change during the 20th Century
- including three-quarters of the warming trend.
A mostly-natural source of global warming is also consistent with mounting observational evidence
that the climate system is much less sensitive to carbon dioxide emissions than the IPCC's climate models simulate.
See
Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO),
A Primer on Our Claim that Clouds Cause Temperature Change
(Sept. 3 '11)
(Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH).
Even more irregular is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) a large-scale mode of natural climate variability
having large impacts on weather and climate in the North Atlantic region and surrounding continents.
Then there are the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the Arctic Oscillation (AO), the Pacific North American Pattern (PNA),
and the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO), all contributing to natural global climate variability.
Negative values of the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) represent the cold ENSO phase (La Niña), while positive values of the MEI represent the warm phase (El Niño). See ESRL-PSD: Multivariate ENSO Index (Klaus Wolter, NOAA).
"El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon to cause global climate variability on interannual time scales. Here we attempt to monitor ENSO by basing the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) on the six main observed variables over the tropical Pacific. These six variables are: sea-level pressure, zonal and meridional components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature, surface air temperature, and total cloudiness fraction of the sky."
ENSO - Diagnostic Discussion: (NOAA-NWS Climate Prediction Center)
"La Niña is likely to transition to ENSO-neutral conditions during March-May 2012."
"A mature La Niña continued during January 2012,
as below-average sea surface temperatures (SST) persisted across the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 9 February 2012.
"La Niña is expected to continue into the Northern spring 2012."
"During December 2011, below-average sea surface temperatures (SST) associated with La Niña
continued across the eastern and central equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 5 January 2012.
"La Niña is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2011-12."
"During November 2011, below-average sea surface temperatures (SST) associated with La Niña conditions
continued across the eastern and central equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 8 December 2011.
"La Niña conditions are expected to gradually strengthen and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2011-12."
"During September 2011, La Niña conditions strengthened
as indicated by increasingly negative sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies across the eastern half of the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 6 October 2011.
"ENSO-neutral is expected to continue into the Northern Hemisphere fall 2011, with ENSO-neutral or La Niña equally likely thereafter."
"During July 2011, ENSO-neutral
was reflected in the overall pattern of small sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies across the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 4 August 2011.
"ENSO-neutral conditions have developed and are expected to continue at least through the Northern Hemisphere summer 2011."
"A transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral conditions occurred during May 2011
as indicated by generally small sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies across the equatorial Pacific Ocean east of the Date Line."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 9 June 2011.
"A transition to ENSO-neutral conditions is expected by June 2011."
"La Niña weakened for the third consecutive month,
as reflected by increasing surface and subsurface ocean temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 7 April 2011.
"La Niña persisted during January 2011
as reflected by well below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across much of the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 10 February 2011.
"La Niña is expected to continue well into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2011.
A moderate-to-strong La Niña continued during December 2010
as reflected by well below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 6 January 2011.
"During November 2010,
the ongoing La Niña was reflected by below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 9 December 2010.
"La Niña is expected to last at least into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2011."
"La Niña continued during September 2010 as reflected by the large expanse of below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs)
across most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean."
"All weekly Niño SST index values were between -1.3°C and -1.8°C at the end of the month."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 7 October 2010.
"La Niña is expected to last at least through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2010-11."
"La Niña strengthened during August 2010,
as negative sea surface temperature (SSTs) anomalies reached at least -1°C across most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean
by the end of the month."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 9 September 2010.
"El Niño dissipated during May 2010 as positive surface temperature (SSTs) anomalies
decreased rapidly across the equatorial Pacific Ocean and negative SSTs anomalies emerged across the eastern half of the Pacific."
See
ENSO Diagnostic Discussion - 3 June 2010.
For a monthly archive since January 2001, see El Nino Southern Oscillation Diagnostic Discussion Archive (Climate Prediction Center, NOAA-NWS).
"El Niño events release heat from the tropical Pacific,
and through ocean currents and changes in atmospheric circulation, they raise surface temperatures outside of the tropical Pacific."
"During La Niña events, the tropical Pacific releases less heat than normal, and global temperatures decline."
"La Niña events are a vital portion of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) coupled ocean-atmosphere process. La Niña events recharge the heat released from the tropical Pacific during the El Niño."
"Note that most La Niña events do not fully recharge the heat released by the El Niño events."
"During a La Niña event, tropical Pacific trade winds rise above normal levels. The increase in trade winds reduces cloud cover. Reduced cloud cover allows more Downward Shortwave Radiation (visible light) to warm the tropical Pacific."
"Contrary to the beliefs of anthropogenic warming proponents
the 1997/98 El Niño was NOT fueled by a long-term accumulation of heat from manmade greenhouse gases.
The 1997/98 El Niño was strong enough to temporarily raise Global Lower Troposphere Temperature anomalies ~0.7°C."
"The La Niña event of 1973/74/75/76 provided the tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content necessary for the increase in strength and frequency of El Niño events from 1976 to 1995. The 1995/96 La Niña furnished the Ocean Heat Content that served as fuel for the 1997/98 El Niño. And the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña recharged the tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content after the 1997/98 El Niño, returning it to the new higher level established by the La Niña of 1995/96."
See Tisdale on the importance of El Nino's little sister - recharging ocean heat content (Bob Tisdale, Feb. 13 '10, Watts Up With That?).
See El Niño story,
El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (NOAA)
Occasionally Asked Questions about El Niño
(Billy Kessler, NOAA)
An Introduction To ENSO, AMO, and PDO - Part 1
(Bob Tisdale, August 8, 2010)
El Niño: online meteorology guide
(WW2010, University of Illinois)
Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) Project (Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array, NOAA)
NOAA El Niño Research, Forecasts and Observations
El Niño and La Niña: Tracing the Dance of Ocean and Atmosphere
(The National Academies)
El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (NWS JetStream)
The Definition of El Niño
(.pdf, Kevin E. Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1 August 1997)
Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years
(Mads Faurschou Knudsen, Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz, Bo Holm Jacobsen & Antoon Kuijpers. Nature Communications, 01 February 2011)
Global SST anomalies rose and fell over the past 100 years in response to the dominant ENSO phase;
that is, Global SST anomalies rose over multidecadal periods when and because El Niño events prevailed
and they fell over multidecadal periods when and because La Niña events dominated.
The oceans outside of the central and eastern tropical Pacific integrate the impacts of ENSO, and it would only require the oceans to accumulate 6% of the annual ENSO signal in order to explain most of the rise in global SST anomalies since 1910.
See Integrating ENSO: Multidecadal Changes In Sea Surface Temperature (Bob Tisdale, Nov. 19 '10, Watts Up With That?).
See Can Most Of The Rise In The Satellite-Era Surface Temperatures Be Explained Without Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases? (Bob Tisdale, Jan. 10 '11, Watts Up With That?).
Global Warming: Natural or Manmade?
According to Dr. Roy Spencer, "Global warming" refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. This website describes evidence from my group's government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity's greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution.
How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low.
See Global Warming: Natural or Manmade?
(Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
According to Dr. Roy Spencer, "most climate change might well be the result of .... the climate system itself!"
Because small, chaotic fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause small changes in global average cloudiness,
this is all that is necessary to cause climate change.
The less you know about how the climate system works, the more fragile the climate system looks to you.
If you simply assert that there are no natural causes of climate change,
you will conclude that our climate system is precariously balanced on a knife edge.
A mostly-natural source of global warming is also consistent with mounting observational evidence that the climate system is much less sensitive to carbon dioxide emissions than the IPCC's climate models simulate.
See Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) (Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
"Generally quoted uncertainty figures from studies going back to the start of the Holocene
have temperature uncertainties in the range of ±3.0°C.
Even in more recent time frames,
data quoted by the IPCC show temperature uncertainties that exceed the measured temperature increases for the last century.
In fact, the IPCC's projected increase falls within the uncertainty range of the data they based their predictions on."
"From studies of Antarctic ice cores going back half a million years, the average CO2 to temperature lag is 1,300 years ±1,000 years. Samples taken from around the end of the last glacial period indicate that the CO2 levels did not begin to rise until after the warming began."
"In results published in Science, a high-resolution deuterium profile is now available for the entire EPICA Dome C ice core. This profile allowed the construction of a climate record that extends back to 800,000 years before the present. The ice core has provided temperature data covering 11 glacial, and corresponding interglacial, periods. The authors used an atmospheric global climate model (GCM) to calculate an improved temperature record for the entire interval, finding temperatures during warm intervals as much as 8°F (4.5°C) warmer, and, during cold intervals, as much as 18°F (10°C) lower, than preanthropogenic Holocene values."
See The Resilient Earth, Chapter 13, Experimental Data and Error (.pdf Downloadable Book. Doug L. Hoffman & Allen Simmons, 2008 - Free)
Carbon dioxide cycles with temperature spikes as evidenced by the graph below.
A temperature spike is followed by a CO2 increase as ocean temperatures rise and the solubility of CO2 decreases.
Vostok Ice core data
Petit, J.R., et. al., "Climate and Atmospheric History of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica",
Nature 399: 429-436, June 3, 1999.
Climate Science: Is It Currently Designed To Answer Questions?:
Richard Lindzen, 29 Nov. 2008
"We have the new paradigm where simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation." - Richard Lindzen
When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate,
then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research.
Science is primarily a successful mode of inquiry rather than a source of authority.
It is my impression that by the end of the 60's scientists, themselves, came to feel that the real basis for support was not gratitude (and the associated trust that support would bring further benefit) but fear: fear of the Soviet Union, fear of cancer, etc.
However, between the perceptions of gratitude and fear as the basis for support lies a world of difference in incentive structure. If one thinks the basis is gratitude, then one obviously will respond by contributions that will elicit more gratitude. The perpetuation of fear, on the other hand, militates against solving problems.
However, the end of the cold war, by eliminating a large part of the fear-base forced a reassessment of the situation. Most thinking has been devoted to the emphasis of other sources of fear: competitiveness, health, resource depletion and the environment.
The 60's saw the first major postwar funding cuts for science in the US. The budgetary pressures of the Vietnam War may have demanded savings someplace, but the fact that science was regarded as, to some extent, dispensable, came as a shock to many scientists. So did the massive increase in management structures and bureaucracy which took control of science out of the hands of working scientists.
Fear has several advantages over gratitude. Gratitude is intrinsically limited, if only by the finite creative capacity of the scientific community. Moreover, as pointed out by a colleague at MIT, appealing to people's gratitude and trust is usually less effective than pulling a gun. In other words, fear can motivate greater generosity.
Science since the sixties has been characterized by the large programs that this generosity encourages. Moreover, the fact that fear provides little incentive for scientists to do anything more than perpetuate problems, significantly reduces the dependence of the scientific enterprise on unique skills and talents.
One result of the above appears to have been the deemphasis of theory because of its intrinsic difficulty and small scale, the encouragement of simulation instead (with its call for large capital investment in computation), and the encouragement of large programs unconstrained by specific goals.
In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage.
This new paradigm for science and its dependence on fear-based support may not constitute corruption per se, but it does serve to make the system particularly vulnerable to corruption. Much of the remainder of this paper will illustrate the exploitation of this vulnerability in the area of climate research. The situation is particularly acute for a small weak field like climatology. As a field, it has traditionally been a subfield within such disciplines as meteorology, oceanography, geography, geochemistry, etc. These fields, themselves are small and immature. At the same time, these fields can be trivially associated with natural disasters. Finally, climate science has been targeted by a major political movement, environmentalism, as the focus of their efforts, wherein the natural disasters of the earth system, have come to be identified with man's activities - engendering fear as well as an agenda for societal reform and control.
The temptation to politicize science is overwhelming and longstanding. Public trust in science has always been high, and political organizations have long sought to improve their own credibility by associating their goals with 'science' - even if this involves misrepresenting the science.
Given the above, it would not be surprising if working scientists would make special efforts to support the global warming hypothesis. There is ample evidence that this is happening on a large scale.
Although the situation suggests overt dishonesty, it is entirely possible, in today's scientific environment, that many scientists feel that it is the role of science to vindicate the greenhouse paradigm for climate change as well as the credibility of models.
From
Climate Science: Is It Currently Designed To Answer Questions?
(Richard Lindzen, 29 Nov 2008, version v3)
Roger Revelle - Gore's Guru Disagreed:
In the history of the global-warming movement,
no scientist is more revered than Roger Revelle of Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
Harvard University and University of California San Diego.
He was the co-author of the seminal 1957 paper that demonstrated that fossil fuels had increased carbon-dioxide levels in the air.
Under his leadership, the President's Science Advisory Committee Panel on Environmental Pollution in 1965
published the first authoritative U.S. government report in which carbon dioxide from fossil fuels was officially recognized
as a potential global problem.
He was the author of the influential 1982 Scientific American article that elevated global warming on to the public agenda.
For being "the grandfather of the greenhouse effect", as he put it,
he was awarded the National Medal of Science by the first President Bush.
Roger Revelle's most consequential act, however, may have come in his role as a teacher, during the 1960s at Harvard.
Dr. Revelle inspired a young student named Al Gore.
While Gore in the late 1980s was becoming a prominent politician, loudly warning of globalwarming dangers,
Dr. Revelle was quietly warning against taking any drastic action.
In a July 14, 1988, letter to Congressman Jim Bates, he wrote that: "Most scientists familiar with the subject are not yet willing to bet that the climate this year is the result of 'greenhouse warming'. As you very well know, climate is highly variable from year to year, and the causes of these variations are not at all well understood. My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways". A few days later, he sent a similar letter to Senator Tim Wirth, cautioning "... we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer".
Then in 1991, Dr. Revelle wrote an article for Cosmos, a scientific journal, with two illustrious colleagues, Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Entitled "What to do about greenhouse warming: Look before you leap", the article argued that decades of research could be required for the consequences of increased carbon dioxide to be understood, and laid out the harm that could come of acting recklessly: "Drastic, precipitous and, especially, unilateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase the human costs of global poverty, without being effective. Stringent controls enacted now would be economically devastating, particularly for developing countries for whom reduced energy consumption would mean slower rates of economic growth without being able to delay greatly the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Yale economist William Nordhaus, one of the few who have been trying to deal quantitatively with the economics of the greenhouse effect, has pointed out that '... those who argue for strong measures to slow greenhouse warming have reached their conclusion without any discernible analysis of the costs and benefits ...'. It would be prudent to complete the ongoing and recently expanded research so that we will know what we are doing before we act. 'Look before you leap' may still be good advice".
Three months after the Cosmos article appeared, Dr. Revelle died of a heart attack.
See
Lawrence Solomon: Gore's Guru Disagreed
(Financial Post, April 28, 2007. The Heartland Institute, 21549.pdf)
See Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking (Hoover Institution, January 1, 2003. Chapter 11: The Revelle-Gore Story: Attempted Political Suppression of Science, by Fred Singer)
Dr. S. Fred Singer is Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and chairman of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).
His specialty is atmospheric and space physics.
An expert in remote sensing and satellites,
he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently,
as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere.
In 2007, he founded the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change),
providing an alternative scientific voice to the UN's IPCC (intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
He edited the first NIPCC report Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate (2008)
and co-authored the full NIPCC report Climate Change Reconsidered (2009).
Read the 2011 Interim Report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
See Booklet: NIPCC vs. IPCC (S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, August 2011, .pdf)
Syun-Ichi Akasofu - Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change:
(1) The Recovery from the Little Ice Age
(A Possible Cause of Global Warming)
(2) The Multi-decadal Oscillation
(The Recent Halting of the Warming)
Two natural components of the currently progressing climate change are identified. The first one is an almost linear global temperature increase of about 0.5°C/100 years, which seems to have started in 1800–1850, at least one hundred years before 1946 when manmade CO2 in the atmosphere began to increase rapidly. This 150~200-year-long linear warming trend is likely to be a natural change. One possible cause of this linear increase may be the earth’s continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age (1400~1800); the recovery began in 1800~1850. This trend (0.5°C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. As a result, there is a possibility that only a small fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities.
It is also shown that various cryosphere phenomena, including glaciers in many places in the world and sea ice in the Arctic Ocean that had developed during the Little Ice Age, began to recede after 1800 and are still receding; their recession is thus not a recent phenomenon.
The second one is oscillatory (positive/negative) changes, which are superposed on the linear change. One of them is the multi-decadal oscillation, which is a natural change. This particular natural change had a positive rate of change of about 0.15°C/10 years from about 1975 (positive from 1910 to 1940, negative from 1940 to 1975), and is thought by the IPCC to be a sure sign of the greenhouse effect of CO2. However, the positive trend from 1975 has stopped after 2000. One possibility of the halting is that after reaching a peak in 2000, the multi-decadal oscillation has begun to overwhelm the linear increase, causing the IPCC prediction to fail as early as the first decade of the 21st century.
There is an urgent need to correctly identify natural changes and remove them from the present global warming/cooling trend, in order to accurately and correctly identify the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect. Only then can the effects of CO2 be studied quantitatively. Arctic research should be able to contribute greatly to this endeavor.
See Syun-Ichi Akasofu - Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change (April 30, 2009. International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks)
"Professor Murry Salby
is Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University.
He's been on visiting professorships at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto,
and he’s spent time at the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia."
"Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels."
See Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans (Jo Nova, August 2011)
Professor Murry Salby
Chair of Climate, Macquarie University (Australia)
Atmospheric Science, Climate Change and Carbon – Some Facts
Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources
"Carbon dioxide is emitted by human activities as well as a host of natural processes. The satellite record, in concert with instrumental observations, is now long enough to have collected a population of climate perturbations, wherein the Earth-atmosphere system was disturbed from equilibrium. Introduced naturally, those perturbations reveal that net global emission of CO2 (combined from all sources, human and natural) is controlled by properties of the general circulation – properties internal to the climate system that regulate emission from natural sources. The strong dependence on internal properties indicates that emission of CO2 from natural sources, which accounts for 96 per cent of its overall emission, plays a major role in observed changes of CO2. Independent of human emission, this contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is only marginally predictable and not controllable."
Salby's talk was given in August 2 '11 at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics meeting in Melbourne Australia. He indicates that a journal paper is in press, with an expectation of publication a few months out.
See The Emily Litella moment for climate science and CO2? (Anthony Watts, August 5 2011)
Roy Spencer, 2008: "The long-term increases in carbon dioxide concentration that have been observed at Mauna Loa since 1958
could be driven more by the ocean than by mankind's burning of fossil fuels."
See
UPDATED: Roy Spencer on how Oceans are Driving CO2
(Anthony Watts, January 25 2008)
See
Spencer Part2: More CO2 Peculiarities – The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio
(Anthony Watts, January 28 2008)
"Professor Robert (Bob) Carter
is an adjunct Research Fellow at James Cook University (Queensland).
He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than 40 years professional experience,
and holds degrees from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Cambridge (England).
He has held tenured academic staff positions at the University of Otago (Dunedin) and James Cook University (Townsville),
where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999."
"Climate change knows three realities.
Science reality, which is what working scientists deal with on a daily basis.
Virtual reality, which is the wholly imaginary world inside computer climate models.
And public reality, which is the socio-political system within which politicians, business people and the general citizenry work.
The science reality is that climate is a complex, dynamic, natural system that no one wholly comprehends,
though many scientists understand different small parts.
So far, and despite the very strong public concern,
science provides no unambiguous evidence that dangerous or even measurable human-caused global warming is occurring.
Second, the virtual reality is that computer models predict future climate according to the assumptions that are programmed into them.
There is no established Theory of Climate,
and therefore the potential output of all realistic computer general circulation models (GCMs)
encompasses a range of both future warmings and coolings,
the outcome depending upon the way in which a particular model run is constructed.
Different results can be produced at will simply by adjusting such poorly known parameters as the effects of cloud cover.
Third, public reality is that, driven by strong environmental lobby groups and evangelistic scientists and journalists,
to whom politicians in turn respond,
there was a widespread but erroneous belief in our society in 2009
that dangerous global warming is occurring and that it has human causation."
"The current public 'debate' on climate is not so much a debate as it is an incessant and shrill campaign to scare the global citizenry into accepting dramatic changes in their way of life in pursuit of the false god of preventing dangerous global warming."
From Prof. Carter's book "Climate: the Counter Consensus" (2010). Stacey International.
See
Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter Biography
See also
Ten Facts about Climate Change They Don't Want You to Know
"IPCC predicts rapid, exponential CO2 growth that is not occurring."
"The IPCC assume CO2 concentration will rise exponentially from today's 385 parts per million to reach 730 to 1,020 ppm, central estimate 836 ppm, by 2100." "However, for seven years, CO2 concentration has been rising in a straight line towards just 570 ppm by 2100."
"Since 1980 global temperature has risen at only 2.7°F (1.5°C)/century, not 6°F (3.4°C) as IPCC predicts."
"Sea level rose just 8 inches (20 cm) in the 20th century, and has been rising since 1993 at a very modest 1 ft/century (30.5 cm/century)."
See SPPI Monthly CO2 Report: June 2010 (Science and Public Policy Institute)
See Trends in Carbon Dioxide - Mauna Loa (NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory)
"The observed increase in global mean surface temperature over the industrial era
is less than 40% of that expected from observed increases in long-lived greenhouse gases together with
the best-estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity
given by the 2007 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."
See Why Hasn't Earth Warmed as Much as Expected? (Stephen E. Schwartz et al. - AMS Online Journals)
Natural Variability To Dominate Weather Events Over Coming 20-30 Years:
IPCC SREX Summary for Policymakers
Approved Text - Subject to Copy Edit
18 November 2011
D. Future Climate Extremes, Impacts, and Disaster Losses
"Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain."
From IPCC SREX Summary for Policymakers (18 November 2011, pg. 9)
See Climate Change Weather Effects Unknown: IPCC Report (The Global Warming Policy Foundation - GWPF)
"What is Wrong With the IPCC? Proposals for Radical Reform":
"The IPCC plays a very influential role in the world, and it is imperative that its operations be unimpeachable. Yet the oversight mechanisms of the IPCC simply do not appear to be adequate to assure this."
"This report reviews the IPCC procedures in detail and points out a number of weaknesses. Principally, the IPCC Bureau has a great deal of arbitrary power over the content and conclusions of the assessment reports. It faces little restraint in the review process due to weaknesses in the current rules. And the government delegates who comprise the plenary Panel provide what appears to be largely passive and ineffective oversight."
Ross R. McKitrick is Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He is a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
See What is Wrong With the IPCC? Proposals for Radical Reform (GWPF, Ross McKitrick, 22 November 2011, .pdf)
HADCRUT3 - Global Temperature Record:
The time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2010. It shows no additional warming since 2003.
Global surface air temperature anomalies (-0.6 to +0.6 °C) from 1850 to 2010 (1961-90 mean)
The increment of temperature from 1850 to 2010 has been some 0.8°C, 0.47°C from 1980
From CRU Information Sheet no. 1: Global Temperature Record (January 2011, Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK)
The warmest year in HADCRUT3gl is 1998 (0.647°C), then 2002 (0.611°C), 2007 (0.610°C), and 2010 (0.583°C).
The NCDC - Monthly Global Mean Surface Temperature Anomalies over Land & Ocean database shows a similar flat trend from 2003 to 2010 (16-May-2011, NOAA, National Climatic Data Center).
The annual mean anomalies Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset shows a decline of 0.5°C from 2001 to 2011.
See Don Easterbrook's AGU paper on potential global cooling (Watts Up With That?, December 29 '08)
See Svensmark: "global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning" - "enjoy global warming while it lasts" (Professor Henrik Svensmark, Watts Up With That?, September 10, '09)
Surface air temperatures have been of much interest lately,
as some scientists have detected an accelerating 'global warming' trend since 1980 (near 1,5°C per century),
while others have detected more recently a significant slowing since 1998, and even a reversal of this trend since 2001,
to near -0.6°C (-1.08°F) per century.
This is shown below for the Climatic Research Unit and the UK Met Office Hadley Centre data (HADCRUT3).
See WoodForTrees.org - Plot of HADCRUT3gl: Unadjusted global monthly mean temperature anomalies 1980-2011.92 (°C) + linear trends from 1980 & 2001. If in Series 3 you change the From (time) Value to 1998 you will see how the trend has been almost flat since 1998 (-0.0264°C per century), when the temperature anomaly reached a record peak of 0.756°C.
"All the files on this page, Temperature data (HadCRUT3 and CRUTEM3) (except Absolute) will be updated on a monthly basis to include the latest month within about four weeks of its completion."
"This [HADCRUT3] is the one of the most commonly cited sources of global temperature data, but the numbers just don't stay put.
Each and every month the past monthly temperatures are revised."
See CRU Monthly Temperature is Constantly Changing (January 31st, 2011. The Inconvenient Skeptic, John Kehr)
See also An Open Letter to Dr. Phil Jones of the UEA CRU (Willis Eschenbach, Watts Up With That?, November 27 '11)
UHA - Satellite-Based Global Temperature Record:
"Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The signals that these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies are directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere."
"As of early 2011, our most stable instrument for this monitoring is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA's Aqua satellite and providing data since late 2002."
"The graph linked below represents the latest update; updates are usually made within the first week of every month."
UAH - Global lower tropospheric temperature anomalies, 1979 thru January 2012, relative to 1981 thru 2010
[The red curve is the running, centered 13-month average]
The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.
"The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for October, 2011 dropped, to +0.11 deg. C.
The Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, and tropics have all cooled substantially,
consistent with the onset of another La Niña, with the tropics now back below the 1981-2010 average."
"The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for November, 2011 remained about the same as last month, at +0.12 deg. C."
"The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for December, 2011 remained about the same as November, +0.13 deg. C."
"The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for January, 2012 took a precipitous plunge [to -0.09 deg. C.], not totally unexpected for a La Niña January."
See Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures
(Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
For those tracking our
daily updates of global temperatures at the Discover website,
remember that only 2 "channels" can be trusted for comparing different years to each other,
both being the only ones posted there from NASA's AQUA satellite:
1) only ch05 [14,000 ft/4.4 Km/600 mb] data should be used for tracking tropospheric temperatures,
2) the global-average "sea surface" temperatures are from AMSR-E on AQUA, and should be accurate.
["Channels" 5 and 9 allow comparing against the 1979-1998 average]
Note the "El Niño Warming" of 1998, when the temperature anomaly reached a record peak of 0.66°C.
The temperature trend for UAH NSSTC lower tropospheric global mean from 1979 to 2002 was 1.04°C per century.
The temperature trend for UAH NSSTC lower tropospheric global mean from 2002 to 2012 was 0.32°C per century.
Predictions Of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections: (Dr. Girma Orssengo, April 27 '10)
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that human emission of CO2 causes catastrophic global warming."
"In this article, a mathematical model was developed that agrees with observed Global Mean Temperature Anomaly (GMTA), and its prediction shows global cooling by about 0.42 deg C until 2030. Also, comparison of observed increase in human emission of CO2 with increase in GMTA during the 20th century shows no relationship between the two. As a result, the claim by the IPCC of climate catastrophe is not supported by the data."
"As a result, as year 2000 with GMTA of 0.48 deg C was the end of a global warming phase, it is also the start of a global cooling phase of 0.42 deg C in 30 years. As a result, the next GMTA turning point will be near 2000+30=2030 with GMTA of 0.48-0.42=0.06 deg C."
Figure 3. Comparison of observed Global Yearly Mean Temperature Anomaly (GMTA) with models.
Linear anomaly in deg C = 0.0059*(Year-1880) - 0.52 [Equation 1]
"Note that the increase in GMTA of 0.35 deg C from 1880 to 1940 (or from 1940 to 2000) in a 60 year period has a warming rate of 0.35/60=0.0058 deg per year, which is the slope of the linear anomaly given by Equation 1. As a result, the linear anomaly is not affected by CO2 emission. Obviously, as the oscillating anomaly is cyclic, it is not related to the 5-fold increase in human emission of CO2."
"One of the most important variables that affect global mean surface temperature is ocean current cycles. The rising of cold water from the bottom of the sea to its surface results in colder global mean surface temperature; weakening of this movement results in warmer global mean surface temperature. Various ocean cycles have been identified. The most relevant to global mean temperature turning points is the 20 to 30 years long ocean cycle called Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO):
Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: "cool" PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while "warm" PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990's (Mantua et al. 1997, Minobe 1997).
These cool and warm PDO regimes correlate well with the cooling and warming phases of GMTA shown in Figure 3.
The model in Figure 3 predicts global cooling until 2030. This result is also supported by shifts in PDO that occurred at the end of the last century, which is expected to result in global cooling until about 2030."
See Predictions Of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections (Girma Orssengo, B. Tech, MASc, PhD. Watts Up With That?, April 27 '10)
See also A primer for disproving IPCC's theory of man made global warming using observed temperature data (Girma Orssengo, B. Tech, MASc, PhD. Watts Up With That?, August 1 '10)
See also Interpretation of the Global Mean Temperature Data as a Pendulum (Girma Orssengo, B. Tech, MASc, PhD. Watts Up With That?, August 19 '11)
The term 'global' should mean that every region shows the same trend.
The term 'global temperature' should be well defined and the relevant data made public.
Much attention has been given to the possible effect of the increase of 'heat retention gases' in our atmosphere;
the atmospheric 'greenhouse effect', and its possible cause.
There are a number of geologists and other Earth-science researchers that have concluded that
the atmospheric 'greenhouse effect' is real and its increase has to be man-made;
by CO2 in particular, product of the recent industrial proliferation and its fossil-fuel energy demands.
But carbon dioxide is plant food, they use it to produce their energy and store it in their bodies. All animals produce it when they breathe, it is present in the interior of the Earth and surfaces during volcanic eruptions. The main store of available CO2 is in the oceans, which give it off into the atmosphere when the temperature rises.
Other Earth-scientists have concluded that because, long before today's industrial age,
there have been elevated levels of temperatures and 'heat retention gases' in our atmosphere repeating in a cyclical fashion,
the Earth must now be doing what it always has done; warming and then cooling,
the polar ice caps advancing and then retreating cyclically under the influence of the Sun, Earth's orbit and the ocean currents.
They point out to the most recent global warming period around the middle ages when the climate warmed to include northern Europe
having mild winters and very warm summers: the "Medieval Warm Period", from approximately A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1350.
Then the Earth's climate was in a cool period from A.D. 1400 to about A.D. 1860, named the "Little Ice Age".
The "Holocene Maximum" was the warmest period in human history, from some 7,500 to some 4,000 years ago.
Then the Earth cooled again till around year 1000.
Beginning about 18,000 years ago the Earth started warming up. Some 8,000 years ago the bridge between Asia and North America was submerged. During the past 750,000 years of Earth's history, Ice Ages have occurred at regular intervals, of approximately 100,000 years each.
See Global warming is all in the timescales (Thomas Fuller, SF Environmental Policy Examiner, Jul 22 '09)
See Shellfish could supplant tree-ring climate data (Richard A. Lovett, Nature News, Mar 8 '10)
See When the IPCC 'disappeared' the Medieval Warm Period (Frank Lansner, Watts Up With That?, Mar 10 '10)
The "Greenhouse Effect":
Svante Arrhenius (Physicist/Chemist, Sweden, 1859-1927) proposed in 1896 a theory to account for the Earth's ice ages, he was the first scientist to speculate that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature of the Earth through a "greenhouse effect".
He suggested that the human emission of CO2 would be strong enough to prevent the world from entering a new ice age, and that a warmer earth would be needed to feed the rapidly increasing population. He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming.
Arrhenius estimated that a halving of CO2 would decrease temperatures by 4-5°C and a doubling of CO2 would cause a temperature rise of 5-6°C. In his 1906 publication, Arrhenius adjusted the value downwards to 1.6°C (including water vapor feedback: 2.1°C). Recent estimates from IPCC (2007) say this value (the Climate Sensitivity) is likely to be between 2 and 4.5°C. But Sherwood Idso in 1998 calculated the Climate Sensitivity to be 0.4°C, and more recently Richard Lindzen at 0.5°C. Roy Spencer calculated 1.3°C in 2011.
See Svante Arrhenius (Wikipedia)
See Sherwood Idso (1998) (.pdf, 76,3 KB)
See Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously (Richard Lindzen, 2007, lower in this page)
See Global Warming 101 (Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
See Weak Warming of the Oceans 1955-2010 Implies Low Climate Sensitivity (May 12, 2011. Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
See More Musings from the Greenhouse (February 19, 2012. Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum:
"Assessing impacts of future anthropogenic carbon emissions is currently impeded by uncertainties in our knowledge of equilibrium climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling. Previous studies suggest 3 K as best estimate, 2 to 4.5 K as the 66% probability range, and nonzero probabilities for much higher values, the latter implying a small but significant chance of high-impact climate changes that would be difficult to avoid. Here, combining extensive sea and land surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum with climate model simulations, we estimate a lower median (2.3 K) and reduced uncertainty (1.7 to 2.6 K, 66% probability). Assuming paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future as predicted by our model, these results imply lower probability of imminent extreme climatic change than previously thought."
From Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum (Andreas Schmittner et al. - Science, November 24 2011)
See Global Warming Forecasts 'Exaggerated' (Dr. David Whitehouse, GWPF, November 25 2011)
On the meaning of feedback parameter, transient climate response, and the greenhouse effect:
Basic considerations and the discussion of uncertainties.
Gerhard Kramm and Ralph Dlugi, 4 Feb. 2010
"In this paper we discuss the meaning of feedback parameter, greenhouse effect and transient climate response usually related to the globally averaged energy balance model of Schneider and Mass. After scrutinizing this model and the corresponding planetary radiation balance we state that (a) the this globally averaged energy balance model is flawed by unsuitable physical considerations, (b) the planetary radiation balance for an Earth in the absence of an atmosphere is fraught by the inappropriate assumption of a uniform surface temperature, the so-called radiative equilibrium temperature of about 255 K, and (c) the effect of the radiative anthropogenic forcing, considered as a perturbation to the natural system, is much smaller than the uncertainty involved in the solution of the model of Schneider and Mass."
See arXiv:1002.0883v1 [arXiv.org, Physics > Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph)]
Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse:
By Professor R. W. Wood
"There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap."
"I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy."
"As a matter of fact I am of the opinion that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the 'open', the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents."
"To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed."
"When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65°C,
the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other,
owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun,
which were stopped by the glass.
In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.
There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures.
The maximum temperature reached was about 55°C.
From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55°C,
it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely.
This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection,
in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped."
"Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere?
The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents.
The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas.
It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground,
even under the most favourable conditions."
"I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar."
See Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse
(Professor R. W. Wood, Philosophical Magazine, 1909. Vol. 17, pp. 319-320) [in tech-archive.net]
Robert Williams Wood (1868-1955) was an American physicist and inventor.
See Robert W. Wood (Wikipedia)
"As Dick Lindzen alluded to back in 1990, while everyone seems to understand that the greenhouse effect warms the Earth’s surface,
few people are aware of the fact that weather processes greatly limit that warming.
And one very real possibility is
that the 1 deg. C direct warming effect of doubling our atmospheric CO2 concentration by late in this century
will be mitigated by the cooling effects of weather to a value closer to 0.5 deg. C or so (about 1 deg. F).
This is much less than is being predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or by NASA’s James Hansen,
who believe that weather changes will amplify, rather than reduce, that warming."
See What If There Was No Greenhouse Effect?
(Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH. December 31 '09)
The Earth seems to be always oscillating between a cooling period and a warming period.
This would indicate that the climate could be an oscillator regulated by both negative and positive feedbacks, cycling between two states.
See New geologic evidence of past periods of oscillating, abrupt warming, and cooling (Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Watts Up With That?, Nov. 10 '09)
There is some man-made effect taking part in the whole CO2 abundance
(Mauna Loa 387.35 ppm in 2009 + ~1.72 ppm per year globally).
But CO2 would be just a part of the alleged driving force in the present warming phase of the climate oscillation,
most would be from H2O (clouds and water vapor).
The Earth's atmosphere, in terms of mass percent abundance, is: Nitrogen (N2) 75.52%, Oxigen (O2) 23.14%, Argon (Ar) 1.28%, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 0.03%. (other even smaller components are disregarded)
The alleged "greenhouse effect" would be crucial to the survival of life on Earth,
because without it our present global average temperature of some 15°C (59°F) would be instead of some -18°C (-0.4°F).
"When global warming is discussed, the warming effect of greenhouse gases is obviously of prime interest. But it is seldom if ever mentioned that about 50% of the surface warming influence of greenhouse gases has been short-circuited by the cooling effects of weather."
See
Why 33 deg. C for the Earth's Greenhouse Effect is Misleading
(Sep 13 '10)
(Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
"While it seems rather obvious intuitively that a warmer world will have more atmospheric water vapor, and thus positive water vapor feedback, I've listed the first 5 reasons why this might not be the case."
See
Five Reasons Why Water Vapor Feedback Might Not Be Positive
(Sep 14 '10)
(Roy Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
Earth's Greenhouse Gases Equilibrium Hypothesis:
Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, a former contract researcher for NASA's Langley Research Center, discovered a self-regulating mechanism, or "constant", that keeps Earth's greenhouse gases in equilibrium. According to his equilibrium theory, this constant cannot be altered by increases in emissions of CO2 or other atmospheric gases such as methane.
"The only thing my theory is telling us is that the nature of the greenhouse effect is such, that under the conditions we have here on Earth, the atmosphere will maximize its cooling by keeping its infrared optical depth - or infrared absorption - at a preferred critical value."
"With relatively simple computations using NOAA's annual mean temperature, H20 and CO2 time series, I have shown that in the last 61 years, despite a 30 percent increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the cumulative atmospheric absorption of all greenhouse gases has not been changed and has remained constant. There is no runaway greenhouse effect."
"The Earth's atmosphere differs in essence from that of Venus and Mars. Our atmosphere is not totally cloud-covered, as is Venus: globally, about 40% of the sky is always clear. Also we have huge ocean surfaces that serve as a practically unlimited reservoir of water vapor for the air."
"With the help of these two conditions, the Earth's atmosphere attains what the other two planets cannot: a constant, maximized, saturated greenhouse effect, so that adding more greenhouse gases to the mix will not increase the magnitude of the greenhouse effect and, therefore, will not cause any further "global warming"."
See Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres (Ferenc Miskolczi, Idojaras, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Vol. 111, No. 1, January-March 2007, pp. 1-40, .pdf)
See The Stable Stationary Value of The Earth's Global Average Atmospheric Planck-Weigthed Greenhouse-Gas Optical Thickness (Abstract, by Ferenc Miskolczi, Energy & Environment Special Issue: Paradigms in Climate Research, Volume 21 No. 4 2010, August)
See CO2 Cannot Cause Any More "Global Warming" (by Miklos Zagoni, Science and Public Policy Institute, 21 December 2009, .pdf)
See The Saturated Greenhouse Effect (by Ken Gregory, Friends of Science Society, June 2008, update July 2009)
See at Landshape.org (niche modeling): Free CO2 For All, Modeling Global Warming, Miskolczi Part 1, The Virial Theorem, Miskolczi Part 2, Kirchhoff Law, Miskolczi Part 3, Radiative Equilibrium, Miskolczi Part 4, Models of Greenhouse Effect, Greenhouse Effect Physics, Greenhouse Heat Engine
See The Work of Ferenc Miskolczi (Part 1) (by Jennifer Marohasy, May 2nd, 2009)
For a contrary opinion, see Comments on Miskolczi's (2010) Controversial Greenhouse Theory (August 5th, 2010, by Roy Spencer, Ph. D.)
See
Hungarian Physicist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi proves CO2 emissions irrelevant in Earth's Climate
(Dianna Cotter, Portland Civil Rights Examiner, January 12 '10)
New research into greenhouse effect challenges theory of man-made global warming
(Dr. F. Miskolczi, Feb. 9 '10),
Former NASA scientist defends theory refuting global warming doctrine
(Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, February 12 '10)
(Kirk Myers, Seminole County Environmental News Examiner)
A New And Effective Climate Model:
"Despite a substantial increase in the power of the Sun over billions of years
the temperature of the Earth has remained remarkably stable.
My proposition is that the reason for that
is the existence of water in liquid form in the oceans
combined with a relatively stable total atmospheric density.
If the power input from the sun changes then the effect is simply to speed up or slow down the hydrological cycle."
"A change in the speed of the entire hydrological cycle does have a climate effect but as we shall see on timescales relevant to human existence it is too small to measure in the face of internal system variability from other causes."
"Additionally my propositions provide the physical mechanisms accounting for the mathematics of Dr. F. Miskolczi."
"He appears to have demonstrated mathematically that if greenhouse gases in the air other than water vapour increase then the amount of water vapour declines so as to maintain an optimum optical depth for the atmosphere which modulates the energy flow to maintain sea surface and surface air temperature equilibrium."
See A New And Effective Climate Model (Stephen Wilde, Climate Realists, October 16 '10)
See How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Temperature (Stephen Wilde, Irish Weather Online, April 25 '11)
The Thermostat Hypothesis: How clouds and thunderstorms control the Earth's temperature
The Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis is that tropical clouds and thunderstorms actively regulate the temperature of the earth. This keeps the earth at an equilibrium temperature regardless of changes in the forcings.
Several kinds of evidence are presented to establish and elucidate the Thermostat Hypothesis - historical temperature stability of the Earth, theoretical considerations, satellite photos, and a description of the equilibrium mechanism.
See The Thermostat Hypothesis (Willis Eschenbach) (in ARVAL)
Global Temperatures?
"In this report*, we present three global surface climate records,
created from available data by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies [GISS], NOAA National Climatic Data Center [NCDC],
and the cooperative project of the U.K. Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit [CRU] of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v)."
These three analyses are led by Tom Karl (NCDC), Jim Hansen (GISS) and Phil Jones (CRU).
* Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences (US Climate Change Science Program, April 2006, page 32)
In an interview with The Guardian titled "Climate scientist at centre of leaked email row dismisses conspiracy claims" Professor Phil Jones is quoted as saying:
"... Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them."
The differences between the three global surface temperatures that occur
are a result of the analysis methodology as used by each of the three groups. They are not "completely independent".
"The data sets are distinguished from one another by differences in the details of their construction."
"Since the three chosen data sets utilize many of the same raw observations, there is a degree of interdependence."
"The best estimate that has been reported is that 90-95% of the raw data in each of the analyses is the same."
See
An Erroneous Statement Made By Phil Jones To The Media On The Independence Of The Global Surface Temperature Trend Analyses Of CRU, GISS And NCDC
(Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science, Nov. 25 '09),
Climategate's Phil Jones Confesses to Climate Fraud
(Marc Sheppard, American Thinker, February 14 '10)
and
Erroneous Statement By Peter A. Stott And Peter W. Thorne In Nature Titled "How Best To Log Local Temperatures"
(Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science, June 14 '10)
The 1997 Conference on the World Climate Research Programme
to the Third Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
concluded that the global capacity to observe the Earth's climate system is inadequate and is deteriorating worldwide:
"Without action to reverse this decline and develop the Global Climate Observation System,
the ability to characterize climate change and variations over the next 25 years will be even less
than during the past quarter century."
See Adequacy of Climate Observing Systems (1999)
(Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate)
See surfacestations.org (Climate stations physical site survey data)
There has clearly been some warming in recent decades, most notably 1979 to 1998.
However the global surface station based data is seriously compromised by major station dropout.
There has been a clear bias towards removing higher elevation, higher latitude and rural stations.
The data suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes, and improper sitting.
There is missing data and uncertainties in ocean temperatures. These factors all lead to overestimation of temperatures.
See A U.S. ClimateGate? (Joseph D'Aleo, Jan. 17 '10)
See Climategate: CRU Was But the Tip of the Iceberg
(Marc Sheppard, American Thinker, Jan. 22 '10)
See Global Warming blog by John Coleman
(KUSI TV, San Diego, California)
"A simple graph by Canadian statistician, Ross McKitrick puts this in picture form.
His graph shows that when many stations were selectively and suddenly eliminated from world temperature records,
reported global temperature immediately and instantly appeared to step up alarmingly
to higher levels-in the 1990's and 2000's."
"Temperature measuring stations are placed mostly, 2/3rd, on places where effects of urban heat affects measurements, exhaust of air condition, parking lots, airports jet engines exhausts, increased traffic, concrete grounds etc. cause incorrect measurements, i.e. too high temperatures."
"Globally, 12,000 to 14,000 stations during 1970-1989 were reduced to less than 8,000 in year 1991,
further to less than 6,000 in year 2000 and to 1,500 now and mainly located at airports.
Stations were relocated from previous sites in forests and rural areas to urban sites.
Measurements in cold Siberia were eliminated after the collapse of Soviet [Union].
Weather stations were moved from north to south, from high altitudes to low altitudes,
all giving higher temperatures."
"90% of stations give 1-2°C too high temperatures, i.e. more than IPCC claim for AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming).
During 1950 to 1989 with 12-14,000 stations, average temperature is around 10.0°C and 1990 to 2000 temperature is 11-12°C,
average around 11.5°C thus an increase of 1.5°C.
90% of all air temperature measurements are taken over land,
while land covers only 30% of the planet and the oceans cover 70%."
See
two dead elephants in parliament
(Malcolm Roberts, February 7, 2010)
See The Graph of Temperature vs. Number of Stations
(Ross McKitrick)
Sensor measurement uncertainty has never been fully considered in prior appraisals of global average surface air temperature.
The estimated average ±0.2 C station error has been incorrectly assessed as random,
and the systematic error from uncontrolled variables has been invariably neglected.
The systematic errors in measurements from three ideally sited and maintained temperature sensors are calculated herein.
Combined with the ±0.2 C average station error,
a representative lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C was found for any global annual surface air temperature anomaly.
This ±0.46 C reveals that the global surface air temperature anomaly trend from 1880 through 2000
is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C,
and represents a lower limit of calibration uncertainty for climate models
and for any prospective physically justifiable proxy reconstruction of paleo-temperature.
The rate and magnitude of 20th century warming are thus unknowable,
and suggestions of an unprecedented trend in 20th century global air temperature are unsustainable.
See Surface temperature uncertainty, quantified (Patrick Frank, December 2010, quoted at Watts Up With That?, January 20, 2011)
"In 1988 the scientist James Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
announced to Congress (USA) and the world, "Global warming has begun".
He went on to report that, at least to his satisfaction,
he had seen the "signal" in the climate noise and that the earth was destined for global warming,
perhaps in the form of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Hansen later revised his remarks,
but his statement remained the starting point of widespread concerns over global warming.
That same year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed as a joint program
of the United Nations Environmental Program, the World Meteorological Organization,
and the International Congress of Scientific Unions.
It has a mandate to prepare regular assessments of what is known and what should be done about anthropogenic climate change."
See Updating the Climate Science
(Makiko Sato & James Hansen, Columbia University)
See Climate Definition, Synonyms (Answers.com)
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen,
has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen "embarrassed NASA".
He violated NASA's official agency position on climate forecasting
("we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it").
Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.
[January 15, 2009]
Theon declared: "Climate models are useless".
See Watts Up With That? (January 27, 2009)
James Hansen is the director of the
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) (Study of global climate change).
More than 1,000 dissenting scientists from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims
made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore.
See Special Report: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims (CFACT, December 8, 2010)
According to Dr. Freeman Dyson:
"The way the problem is customarily presented to the public is seriously misleading. The public is led to believe that the carbon dioxide problem has a single cause and a single consequence. The single cause is fossil fuel burning, the single consequence is global warming. In reality there are multiple causes and multiple consequences. The atmospheric carbon dioxide that drives global warming is only the tail of the dog. The dog that wags the tail is the global ecology: forests, farms and swamps, as well as power-stations, factories and automobiles. And the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has other consequences that may be at least as important as global warming - increasing crop yields and growth of forests, for example. To handle the problem intelligently, we need to understand all the causes and all the consequences."
See The Science and Politics of Climate (American Physical Society: Freeman J. Dyson, May 1999)
"The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics,
and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans.
They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests.
They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in."
See Heretical Thoughts About Science And Society (Edge: Freeman Dyson, Aug. 8 '07)
According to Dr. Paulo Cesar Soares:
"The dramatic and threatening environmental changes announced for the next decades are the result of models whose main drive factor of climatic changes is the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Although taken as a premise, the hypothesis does not have verifiable consistence."
"CO2 changes are closely related to temperature. Warmer seasons or triennial phases are followed by an atmosphere that is rich in CO2, reflecting the gas solving or exsolving from water, and not photosynthesis activity."
"Monthly changes have no correspondence as would be expected if the warming was an important absorption-radiation effect of the CO2 increase. The anthropogenic wasting of fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere shows no relation with the temperature changes even in an annual basis. The absence of immediate relation between CO2 and temperature is evidence that rising its mix ratio in the atmosphere will not imply more absorption and time residence of energy over the Earth surface. This is explained because band absorption is nearly all done with historic CO2 values. Unlike CO2, water vapor in the atmosphere is rising in tune with temperature changes, even in a monthly scale. The rising energy absorption of vapor is reducing the outcoming long wave radiation window and amplifying warming regionally and in a different way around the globe."
"The main conclusion one arrives at the analysis is that CO2 has not a causal relation with global warming and it is not powerful enough to cause the historical changes in temperature that were observed."
See Warming Power of CO2 and H2O: Correlations with Temperature Changes (Paulo Cesar Soares, International Journal of Geosciences (IJG), Volume 01, Number 03, Nov. 2010)
For a discussion, see New paper - "absence of correlation between temperature changes … and CO2" (Watts Up With That?, January 1, 2011)
According to Dr. Antonino Zichichi:
Global Warming Natural, Says Expert
Addresses Vatican Seminar on Climate Change
Vatican City, April 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Scientists might not have human behavior to blame for global warming, according to the president of the World Federation of Scientists.
Antonio Zichichi, who is also a retired professor of advanced physics at the University of Bologna, made this assertion today in an address delivered to an international congress sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
The conference, which ends today, is examining "Climate Change and Development".
Zichichi pointed out that human activity has less than a 10% impact on the environment.
He also cited that models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view. The U.N. commission was founded in 1988 to evaluate the risk of climate change brought on by humans.
Zichichi, who is also member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, showed that the mathematical models used by the IPCC do not correspond to the criteria of the scientific method.
He said that the IPCC used "the method of 'forcing' to arrive at their conclusions that human activity produces meteorological variations".
The physicist affirmed that on the basis of actual scientific fact "it is not possible to exclude the idea that climate changes can be due to natural causes", and that it is plausible that "man is not to blame".
To that end, Zichichi explained how the motor of meteorology depends on natural phenomena. He gave as an example the "energy sent by the Sun and volcanic activity that spits out lava and enormous quantities of substances in the atmosphere".
He also reminded those present that 500,000 years ago the Earth lost the North and South Poles four times. The poles disappeared and reformed four times, he said.
Zichichi said that in the end he is not convinced that global warming is caused by the increase of emissions of "greenhouse gases" produced through human activity.
Climate changes, he said, depend in a significant way on the fluctuation of cosmic rays.
See Global Warming Natural, Says Expert (Antonino Zichichi, Zenit.org, April 2007)
Meteorology and Climate: Problems and Expectations
Problems with the Mathematical Modelling for "Climatic Changes"
In fact, the present mathematical models are far from being satisfactory. The public at large wishes to know if it is true that human activities are creating a huge perturbation of the climate characteristics of our globe.
To answer this question, the United Nations instituted a permanent committee composed of 2500 scientists from the world over, the IPCC, which has been at work for the last few years and has led the public to believe – as said before – that science has understood all about climate. If that was true, climatologically, the destiny of our planet should be free of uncertainties and under the rigorous control of science. But it’s not this way.
When von Neumann, half a century ago, started it all, the mathematical models describing the climate were two-dimensional. It was the brilliant collaborator of von Neumann, the very young Tsung Dao Lee, Fermi’s favourite pupil and a Nobel Laureate, who introduced the 'third dimension' in the mathematics of climate. Without this third dimension, 'turbulence', the fundamental property of all models, could not exist.
The father of 'turbulence' participated in the Erice Seminars dedicated to the mathematical models used by the ICCP and found them wanting. We’re talking here of mathematical models whose results have consequences costing billions of dollars and involve the responsibility of all the governments in the world.
It is necessary to bring these basic themes back to the scientific laboratories where they belong, taking them away from the hands of those who use them to satisfy ambitions that have nothing to do with scientific truth. The public at large wishes to know what conclusions, based on scientific rigour, can result from the analysis of the measurements already taken.
See Meteorology and Climate: Problems and Expectations (Antonino Zichichi, Università di Bologna, Aug. 2007, .pdf)
Time series of Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Extent:
NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua Satellite was launched on May 4, 2002.
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - (AMSR-E) is one of the six sensors aboard Aqua.
AMSR-E was developed by the National Space Agency of Japan (JAXA).
On October 4, 2011, AMSR-E ended 9+ Years of global observations due to mechanical failure.
See AMSR-E Ends 9+ Years of Global Observations (Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D., Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH).
Daily Updated AMSR-E Sea Ice Maps (2003-2010 with 1972/3-2008 averages)
(total area, in millions of square kilometers, of at least 15% floating ice concentration).
This service is part of the GMES project Polar View and of the Arctic Regional Ocean Observing System (Arctic ROOS).
The AMSR-E instrument has not produced data since Oct 4, 2011. Therefore, the sea ice maps cannot be updated.
We are switching over to SSMIS data which might take a few days.
See AMSR-E problems; maps not updated since Oct. 4 '11.
For a substitute, see Sea Ice Index: Arctic, Antarctic (National Snow and Ice Data Center).
 |
 |
| Arctic. Click on the image to enlarge. | Antarctic. Click on the image to enlarge. |
See Daily Updated AMSR-E Sea Ice Maps (University of Bremen, Germany).
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center,
the Arctic has some 9.3 million Km2 of sea ice (1979-2000 average), 6.8% of it melts per decade.
The Antarctic has some 18.3 million Km2 of sea ice (1979-2000 average), growing 0.8% per decade.
Sea ice is formed when ocean water freezes. Because the oceans are salty, this occurs at about -1.8ºC (28.76ºF).
In the winter the Arctic sea ice more than doubles in size. Arctic sea ice extent is directly dependent on winds and currents, not just on temperatures.
For more graphic information see Global Sea Ice Reference Page (Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That?).
In the winter Antarctica more than doubles in size due to the sea ice that forms around the coasts.
During the winter months it becomes so cold that the sea surrounding Antarctica freezes for hundreds of km off-shore.
This ice breaks up to form pack-ice which, under the action of winds and currents, is constantly changing form and distribution.
About 98% of Antarctica is permanently covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, the largest single mass of ice on Earth,
a sheet of ice averaging at least 1.6 km (1.0 mi) thick.
It covers an area of about 14.6 million km2 and contains 25-30 million km3 of ice.
The continent has about 90% of the world's ice (and thereby about 70% of the world's fresh water).
In some places the ice is over 4 km deep.
The ice flows continuously from the high elevations to the sea, breaking off to form massive icebergs.
The amount of precipitation in Antarctica is so small that it is classed as a desert region (polar desert).
For more information see Fact Files: Geography (Australian Antarctic Division).
Sea level trends: Southern Ocean versus global ocean
Sea level trends of the world's oceans are shown in figure a.
The two curves represent the overall sea level variations
averaged within the Southern Ocean south of 40° S and global ocean, respectively.
The most remarkable feature is a large regional difference in sea level trend.
The North Pacific and equatorial Pacific exhibit the most spectacular east-west seesaw pattern,
with strong positive trends in the western side and strong negative trends in the eastern side.
The Atlantic Ocean shows the most homogeneous field and is associated with weak positive trends in general,
while in the Indian Ocean negative trends are dominant,
except for positive trends in the Indonesian throughflow region and west of Australia.
The Southern Ocean south of 40° S shows noticeable positive trends in most places,
with one notable exception in the Pacific Antarctic Basin, where there is a broad region of strong negative trends.
The Southern Ocean experienced a sharp rise in sea level during the 1997-1998 ENSO period (see figure b).
A similar sea level rise is also observed for the global ocean,
although the amplitude there is only half that of the Southern Ocean.
Over the 1993-2000 period, the mean sea level trend of the Southern Ocean is estimated at 2.34 ± 0.34 mm/yr,
compared to 1.21 ± 0.15 mm/yr for the global ocean.
The latter value is close to the lower bound of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
global trend range over the last century (1-2 mm/yr)
and is also not significantly different from the estimate of Cazenave et al. [1998]
over the period 1993-mid 1997 (1.3 ± 0.15 mm/yr).
Globally, no dramatic sea level rising trend resembling the exponential concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere
is observed during the past century.
See Interannual sea level variability in the Southern Ocean within the context of global climate change (NASA-JPL, TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason)
(a) Map showing sea level trends (mm/yr) calculated at each T/P crossover point over the period 1993-2000.
Before the trend calculation, mean seasonal variations were eliminated from the monthly time series at each data point
and then low-pass filtered using a Gaussian filter with a cut-off at six months.
(b) Mean sea level variations (mm) averaged for the whole Southern Ocean south of 40° S (green)
and for the entire global ocean (red). Area-dependent weights were applied during the averaging process.
See Interannual sea level variability in the Southern Ocean within the context of global climate change (Figure 2) (NASA-JPL, TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason)
This negates a positive CO2 feedback effect on the sea level trends, justifying skepticism.
"Long-term mean sea level change is a variable of considerable interest in the studies of global climate change."
"Since August 1992 the satellite altimeters have been measuring sea level on a global basis with unprecedented accuracy. The TOPEX/POSEIDON (T/P) satellite mission provided observations of sea level change from 1992 until 2005. Jason-1, launched in late 2001 as the successor to T/P, continues this record by providing an estimate of global mean sea level every 10 days with an uncertainty of 3-4 mm."
Since 1993, measurements from the TOPEX and Jason series of satellite radar altimeters have allowed estimates of global mean sea level.
These measurements are continuously calibrated against a network of tide gauges.
When seasonal and other variations are subtracted, they allow estimation of the global mean sea level rate.
According to the Sea Level Research Group, University of Colorado, the mean rate of global sea level rise is 3.1 ± 0.4 mm/yr.
[Includes a
"global mean glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA)"
correction of 0.3 mm/yr. The GIA uncertainty is at least 50 percent.]
See
Global Mean Sea Level Time Series
(Sea Level Research Group, University of Colorado, 2012-02-13)
See also
Mean Sea Level
(Aviso)
There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise!
by Nils-Axel Mörner
21st Century Science & Technology, Winter 2010/2011.
Clear observational measurements in the field indicate that sea level is not rising in the Maldives,
Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and French Guyana.
From the coasts of French Guyana and Surinam there is a very excellent sea level record covering multiple 18.6-year tidal cycles.
It exhibits variations around a stable zero level over the last 50 years.
For the same area, satellite altimetry gives a sea level rise of 3.0 mm/year.
The tide-gauge at Korsør in the Great Belt (the strait between the main Danish islands of Zealand and Funen), for example,
is located at the hinge between uplift and subsidence for the last 8,000 years.
This tide-gauge shows no sea level rise in the last 50-60 years.
The spectrum of proposed rates of present-day sea level changes ranges from 0.0 mm/year, according to observational facts from a number of key sites all over the world, to 3.2 mm/year, according to calibrated satellite altimetry.
Tide-gauges were installed at harbor constructions to measure the changes in tidal level and long-term sea level changes.
Most tide-gauges are installed on unstable harbor constructions or landing piers.
Therefore, tide-gauge records are bound to exaggerate sea level rise.
The IPCC authors take the liberty to select what they call "representative" records
for their reconstruction of the centennial sea level trend.
This, of course, implies that their personal view — that is, the IPCC scenario laid down from the beginning of the project —
is imposed in the selection and identification of their "representative" records.
We start to smell another "sea-level-gate".
The mean of all the 159 NOAA sites gives a rate of 0.5 mm/year to 0.6 mm/year. A better approach, however, is to exclude those sites that represent uplifted and subsided areas. This leaves 68 sites of reasonable stability (still with the possibility of an exaggeration of the rate of change, as discussed above). These sites give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1.0 (± 1.0) mm/year. This is far below the rates given by satellite altimetry, and the smell of a "sea-levelgate" gets stronger.
Renowned oceanographic expert Nils-Axel Mörner has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 45 years.
Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University,
Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution,
and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project.
See The Great Sealevel Humbug: There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise! (by Nils-Axel Mörner, 21st Century Science & Technology, Winter 2010/2011, Science and Public Policy Institute Reprint, 27 May 2011)
Dr. Ryan N. Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update
PhD Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee
"During the past 6-years since Hurricane Katrina,
global tropical cyclone frequency and energy have decreased dramatically, and are currently at near-historical record lows."
"The population of "major" global hurricanes has not increased since 1979."
See Ryan Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update
See Observatorio ARVAL - Meteorology for South Florida and the Caribbean (Dr. Ryan N. Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update)
All these negate a positive CO2 feedback effect on the level of H2O vapor,
postulated by the IPCC, justifying skepticism.
Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2
Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection. Warsaw, Poland
for the Hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
March 19, 2004
"Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to –73°C) contains liquid water. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice."
"The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false. Therefore IPCC projections should not be used for national and global economic planning. The climatically inefficient and economically disastrous Kyoto Protocol, based on IPCC projections, was correctly defined by President George W. Bush as "fatally flawed". This criticism was recently followed by the President of Russia Vladimir V. Putin. I hope that their rational views might save the world from enormous damage that could be induced by implementing recommendations based on distorted science."
See CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time (Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, March 2007)
See also Atmospheric CO2 and global warming: A crititical review (Jaworowski, Segalstad, Hisdal, 02.08.2009)
The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change:
"Though not a pollutant, it is nonetheless the case that carbon dioxide absorbs space-bound infrared radiation, thereby increasing the energy available at Earth’s surface for warming or increased evaporation (eg de Freitas, 2002). Radiation theory thus accepted, there remain four problems with turning an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide into global warming alarmism. First, the relationship between increasing carbon dioxide and increasing temperature is logarithmic, which lessens the forcing effect of each successive increment of carbon dioxide. Second, in increasing from perhaps 280 ppm in pre-industrial times to 380 ppm now, carbon dioxide should already have produced 75 per cent of the theoretical warming of ~1°C that would be caused by a doubling to 560 ppm (Lindzen, 2006); as we move from 380 to 560 ppm, at most a trivial few tenths of a degree of warming remain in the system. Claims of greater warming, such as those of the IPCC (2001), are based upon arbitrary adjustments to the lambda value in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, and untested assumptions about positive feedbacks from water vapour. Third, the ice core data show conclusively that, during natural climate cycling, changes in temperature precede changes in carbon dioxide by an average 800 years or so (Fischer et al, 1999; Indermuhle et al, 2000; Mudelsee, 2001; Caillon et al, 2003); similarly, temperature change precedes carbon dioxide change, in this case by five months, during annual seasonal cycling (Kuo, Lindberg and Thomson, 1990). And, fourth, Boucot, Xu and Scotese (2004) have shown that over the Phanerozoic little relationship exists between the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and necessary warming, including that extensive glaciation occurred between 444 and 353 million years ago when atmospheric carbon dioxide was up to 17 times higher than today (Chumakov, 2004)."
See The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change (Professor R.M. Carter, May 2007, pg. 64)
Michael Mann says hockey stick should not have become 'climate change icon'
From Mann says hockey stick "icon" is "misplaced", Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That?, June 29 2010.
The scientist behind the controversial 'hockey stick' graph has said it was 'somewhat misplaced' to make his work an 'icon of the climate change debate'.
Professor Michael Mann presented a graph in 1998 that showed global temperatures for the last 1,000 years. It showed a sharp rise in temperature over the last 100 years as man made CO2 emissions also increased, creating the shape of a hockey stick and blurring the Medieval Warm Period.
The graph was used by Al Gore in his film 'An Inconvenient Truth' (2006) and was prominently cited in 2001 by the United Nations body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as evidence of the link between fossil fuel use and global warming.
But the graph was questioned by sceptics who pointed out that is it impossible to know for certain the global temperature going back beyond modern times because there were no accurate readings.
The issue became a central argument in the climate change debate and was dragged into the 'climategate' scandal, as the sceptics accused Prof Mann and his supporters of exaggerating the extent of global warming.
However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were "uncertainties" in his work.
"I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate", he said.
Professor John R. Christy,
an atmospheric scientist from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH),
said just a quarter of the current warming is caused by man made emissions.
He said that 10 to 30 per cent of scientists agree with him and are fairly sceptical about the extent of man made global warming.
See
Michael Mann says hockey stick should not have become 'climate change icon'
Louise Gray, Telegraph.co.uk, June 28 2010.
See BBC - The Editors: What's up with the weather? Mike Rudin, 15:54 UK time, Thursday, 24 June 2010.
"Shortly after its publication, the hockey stick and its main author, Michael Mann, came under attack from Steve McIntyre,
a retired statistician from Canada.
In a series of scientific papers and later on his blog, Climate Audit,
McIntyre took issue with the novel statistical procedures used by the hockey stick's authors.
He was able to demonstrate that the way they had extracted the temperature signal from the tree ring records
was biased so as to choose hockey-stick shaped graphs in preference to other shapes,
and criticised Mann for not publishing the cross validation R2,
a statistical measure of how well the temperature reconstruction correlated with actual temperature records.
He also showed that the appearance of the graph
was due solely to the use of an estimate of historic temperatures based on tree rings from bristlecone pines,
a species that was known to be problematic for this kind of reconstruction."
See The M&M Project: Replication Analysis of the Mann et al. Hockey Stick by Steven McIntyre y Ross McKitrick.
See Caspar and the Jesus Paper by A.W. Montford, Bishop Hill blog, Aug. 11, 2008.
See The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford, Bishop Hill blog, Nov. 21, 2009.
There is a new and important study on temperature proxy reconstructions,
A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable?
(McShane and Wyner, 2010) submitted into the Annals of Applied Statistics
and was published in Volume 5, Number 1 (2011).
According to Steve McIntyre (Climate Audit),
this is one of the "top statistical journals".
This paper is a direct and serious rebuttal to the proxy reconstructions of Mann.
It seems watertight on the surface, because instead of trying to attack the proxy data quality issues,
they assumed the proxy data was accurate for their purpose, then created a bayesian backcast method.
Then, using the proxy data, they demonstrate it fails to reproduce the sharp 20th century uptick.
"We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. Furthermore, various model specifications that perform similarly at predicting temperature produce extremely different historical backcasts."
"In sum, these results suggest that the ninety-three sequences that comprise the 1,000 year old proxy record simply lack power to detect a sharp increase in temperature."
See
New paper makes a hockey sticky wicket of Mann et al 98/99/08
Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That?, August 14, 2010
Climate History - Earth History:
A realistic historic reconstruction of the Earth's temperature and geography, from Paleomap Project - Climate History (Dr. Christopher R. Scotese).
The Earth consolidated some 4500 million years ago. About 1100 million years ago, the supercontinent of Rodinia was assembled.
Rodinia split into 2 halves approximately 750 million years ago.
The global climate was cold during the Late Precambrian, some 650 million years ago.
The most popular hypothesis suggests that the Earth was completely frozen - oceans and all - like a giant snowball.
During the last 2 billion years the Earth's climate has alternated between a frigid "Ice House", like today's world, and a steaming "Hot House", like the world of the dinosaurs.
Paleoclimate studies indicate that in the past billion years the Earth's absolute global mean surface temperature has not varied by more than 3% (~8 K = ~8°C) either side of the 750-million-year mean (291 K = 18°C).
See also Paleomap Project - Earth History (Dr. Christopher R. Scotese).
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth:
"The global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in 1998 which has not been exceeded during the subsequent 10 years. The global anomalies are calculated from the average of climate effects occurring in the tropical and the extratropical latitude bands. El Niño/La Niña effects in the tropical band are shown to explain the 1998 maximum while variations in the background of the global anomalies largely come from climate effects in the northern extratropics. These effects do not have the signature associated with CO2 climate forcing. However, the data show a small underlying positive trend that is consistent with CO2 climate forcing with no-feedback."
See
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth
.pdf, David H. Douglass and John R. Christy, 2009.
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions:
"We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 'Climate of the 20th Century' model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data."
See
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
.pdf, Dr. John R. Christy et al, 2007
Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination
Dr. Jason Scott Johnston, Professor of Law and Coordinator, University of Pennsylvania Law School
"Legal scholarship has come to accept as true the various pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientists who have been active in the movement for greenhouse gas (ghg) emission reductions to combat global warming. The only criticism that legal scholars have had of the story told by this group of activist scientists - what may be called the climate establishment - is that it is too conservative in not paying enough attention to possible catastrophic harm from potentially very high temperature increases."
"This paper departs from such faith in the climate establishment by comparing the picture of climate science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other global warming scientist advocates with the peer-edited scientific literature on climate change. A review of the peer-edited literature reveals a systematic tendency of the climate establishment to engage in a variety of stylized rhetorical techniques that seem to oversell what is actually known about climate change while concealing fundamental uncertainties and open questions regarding many of the key processes involved in climate change. Fundamental open questions include not only the size but the direction of feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase predicted to result from atmospheric greenhouse gas increases: while climate models all presume that such feedback effects are on balance strongly positive, more and more peer-edited scientific papers seem to suggest that feedback effects may be small or even negative. The cross-examination conducted in this paper reveals many additional areas where the peer-edited literature seems to conflict with the picture painted by establishment climate science, ranging from the magnitude of 20th century surface temperature increases and their relation to past temperatures; the possibility that inherent variability in the earth's non-linear climate system, and not increases in CO2, may explain observed late 20th century warming; the ability of climate models to actually explain past temperatures; and, finally, substantial doubt about the methodological validity of models used to make highly publicized predictions of global warming impacts such as species loss."
"Insofar as establishment climate science has glossed over and minimized such fundamental questions and uncertainties in climate science, it has created widespread misimpressions that have serious consequences for optimal policy design. Such misimpressions uniformly tend to support the case for rapid and costly decarbonization of the American economy, yet they characterize the work of even the most rigorous legal scholars. A more balanced and nuanced view of the existing state of climate science supports much more gradual and easily reversible policies regarding greenhouse gas emission reduction, and also urges a redirection in public funding of climate science away from the continued subsidization of refinements of computer models and toward increased spending on the development of standardized observational datasets against which existing climate models can be tested."
See Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination
(Dr. Jason Scott Johnston, Professor of Law and Coordinator, Program on Law and the Environment,
University of Pennsylvania - Law School. Institute for Law and Economic Research, Paper No. 10-08, May 1 '10)
Pachauri Defrocked
Donna Laframboise, September 1, 2010
This moment is a turning point in the climate change debate. Not because the report released Monday addresses every concern raised by critics of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but because it knocks the IPCC off its pedestal.
Those who challenge the IPCC's authority are often ignored. Numerous science academies have blessed its efforts, so who are we to question? This week those academies began to act like grownups in relation to this wayward child. The report, authored by a committee assembled by the InterAcademy Council (a collection of science bodies from around the world), blows smoking holes through just about everything the IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has been telling us. [123-page report PDF, updated Feb. 2, 2011]
TRANSPARENCY
He boasts that his organization carries out its work with "complete transparency".
But this report says transparency is in short supply.
Some stages of the IPCC process, it finds,
"are poorly understood, even to many scientists and government representatives who participate in the process".
The report says the IPCC has never established any formal criteria for selecting its most senior personnel, its lead authors, or other key participants. Nor are there any guidelines about what scientific and technical information the IPCC should consider when it carries out its literature review. How these decisions have been made for the past two decades is, therefore, anyone's guess - a situation rather opposite to complete transparency.
The report says a preliminary outline is drawn up by a select group of individuals at the beginning of the IPCC process, but how this happens - and who participates - is a mystery to those who aren't invited. Nor does anything in the following sentence provide comfort to IPCC partisans:
The absence of a transparent author selection process or well-defined criteria for author selection can raise questions of bias and undermine the confidence of scientists and others in the credibility of the assessment...
PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE
In February 2008 Pachauri declared to a committee of the North Carolina legislature
(as he has in many other contexts before and since), that:
...we carry out an assessment of climate change based on peer-reviewed literature, so everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry [the] credibility of peer-reviewed publications, we don't settle for anything less than that. [bold added]
But the InterAcademy report matter-of-factly tells the world that an analysis of the IPCC's third assessment report found only 84% of the source material cited by Working Group 1 was peer-reviewed, only 59% cited by Working Group 2 was, and only 36% cited by Working Group 3 met this standard. (An analysis of the IPCC's fourth assessment report references, organized by yours truly, produced similar results.)
Procedures regarding the use of non-peer-reviewed literature are in place, but the report says "it is clear that these procedures are not always followed". The rules say non-peer-reviewed sources are supposed to be identified as such when listed among the IPCC's references. Yet the InterAcademy report says it "found few instances of information flagged" in this manner. As in almost none. According to my colleague, Hilary Ostrov, only 6 of the 5,587 non-peer-reviewed references in the 2007 IPCC report were properly identified.
In a nutshell, the IPCC doesn't follow it's own procedures. Or, in the more diplomatic phrasing of the report: "stronger mechanisms for enforcing [these procedures] are needed."
ROBUST PROCESSES
Pachauri also told the North Carolina lawmakers that the IPCC's "writing and review process is very robust, very vigorous".
Yet the InterAcademy report confirms that,
no matter how loudly the IPCC's expert reviewers and each chapter's review editors might protest,
the lead authors "have the final say on the content of their chapter".
In other words, the IPCC's vaunted review process amounts to window-dressing.
The InterAcademy committee observes that the IPCC's embarrassing Himalayan glacier error could have been avoided had it merely listened to its own expert reviewers. The mistake was noticed, but the IPCC "did not change the text".
In that instance alone, the IPCC system failed in three ways. First, the IPCC authors chose to rely on an unsubstantiated claim in a non-peer-reviewed document. Then these authors failed to take seriously the feedback from the IPCC's expert reviewers - who pointed out that peer-reviewed material contained more cautious and equivocal conclusions. Finally, the review editors for that chapter failed to ensure that the expert feedback was properly addressed.
Another area of concern relates to the fact that, despite the highly contested nature of the climate debate, and that billions in expenditures around the world are profoundly influenced by the IPCC's findings, this organization has no conflict-of-interest policy.
From
"The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert" (an IPCC Exposé)
Donna Laframboise, (2011-10-09). Ivy Avenue Press. Kindle Edition.
"The IPCC was established by politicians, its experts are selected by politicians, and its conclusions are negotiated by politicians."
From Chapter 17 - Cross-Examination:
"Much to [Dr. Jason Scott] Johnston's surprise, his own research discovered that, "on virtually every major issue in climate change science", IPCC reports "systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties"."
"For example, he devotes dozens of pages to explaining the shortcomings of climate models.
According to these models, increased CO2 will cause the air near the surface of the planet to heat up.
This effect is supposed to be especially pronounced in the atmosphere nearest the equator.
Johnston says this second point gives us an opportunity to empirically test whether the models get it right.
Buried within the pages of the crucial attribution chapter of the 2007 Climate Bible, the IPCC acknowledges there's a problem.
It admits (in none-too-clear language) that the extra heat isn't where the models say it should be.
The real world isn't behaving the way the models predict it will.
Johnston observes that this leaves two possibilities:
Either the real-world data is faulty "or something is wrong with the models".
Guess which explanation the Climate Bible chooses?
The authors of that chapter say the "probable explanation" is that
real temperature data gathered in the real world is "contaminated by errors".
While the IPCC may be content with a probable explanation,
the public surely deserves to be told that the climate models fail this important test.
But as Johnston points out, this fact isn't even mentioned in the Summary for Policymakers document for that section of the Climate Bible."
From the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
9.4.4.4 Differential Temperature Trends:
"Subtracting temperature trends at the surface from those in the free atmosphere removes much of the common variability between these layers and tests whether the model-predicted trends in tropospheric lapse rate are consistent with those observed by radiosondes and satellites (Karl et al., 2006). Since 1979, globally averaged modelled trends in tropospheric lapse rates are consistent with those observed. However, this is not the case in the tropics, where most models have more warming aloft than at the surface while most observational estimates show more warming at the surface than in the troposphere (Karl et al., 2006)".
See
U.N. Hires Grad Students To Author Key Climate Report
(Fox News, Perry Chiaramonte, November 02, 2011)
Have Atmospheric CO2 Increases Been Responsible for the Recent Large Upswing (since 1995)
in Atlantic Basin Major Hurricanes?
"The U.S. landfall of major hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 and the four Southeast landfalling hurricanes of 2004 - Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, raised questions about the possible role that global warming played in those two unusually destructive seasons. In addition, three category 2 hurricanes (Dolly, Gustav and Ike) pummeled the Gulf Coast in 2008 causing considerable devastation. Some researchers have tried to link the rising CO2 levels with SST [Sea Surface Temperatures] increases during the late 20th century and say that this has brought on higher levels of hurricane intensity."
"These speculations that hurricane intensity has increased have been given much media attention; however, we believe that they are not valid, given current observational data."
"There has, however, been a large increase in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity since 1995 in comparison with the prior 15-year period of 1980-1994 (22 major hurricanes) and the prior quarter-century period of 1970-1994 (38 major hurricanes). It has been tempting for many who do not have a strong background in hurricane knowledge to jump on this recent 15-year increase in major hurricane activity as strong evidence of a human influence on hurricanes. It should be noted, however, that the last 15-year active major hurricane period of 1995-2009 (56 major hurricanes) has, however, not been more active than the earlier 15-year period of 1950-1964 (57 major hurricanes) when the Atlantic Ocean circulation conditions were similar to what has been observed in the last 15 years. These conditions occurred even though atmospheric CO2 amounts were lower in the earlier period."
"Although global surface temperatures increased during the late 20th century, there is no reliable data to indicate increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe's other tropical cyclone basins since 1979. Global Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) shows significant year-to-year and decadal variability over the past thirty years but no increasing trend. Similarly, Klotzbach (2006) found no significant change in global TC activity during the period from 1986-2005."
See
Extended Range Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and U.S. Landfall Strike Probability for 2010
(Dr. William Gray, Dr. Phil Klotzbach, Colorado State University, part 10, June 2 '10, .pdf)
This is an
open letter to the community
from Chris Landsea (Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, January 17, 2005).
"Dear colleagues,
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns."
"All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin."
"Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small."
"It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity."
Taking Earth's temperature (UAH):
"In early November 1978 a microwave sensor aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's TIROS polar-orbiting satellite started scanning the Earth's atmosphere."
"The 1997-1998 "El Niño of the century" made 1998 the hottest calendar year during the 28+ year record, with an annual average temperature that was 0.47°C (0.85°F) warmer than normal."
"There is no scientific evidence to support the belief that Earth's climate is stable and will not change if human activity does not intervene."
"While the approximately 0.14°C per decade of global warming seen in the satellite data is minor compared to the scale of some past climate shifts, it reminds us that the natural processes of climate change have not stopped."
"Looking at the history of paleoclimate data indicates that the climate is capable of significant changes for reasons that are not understood."
"The current level of knowledge about the climate
doesn't provide the tools needed to predict when rapid natural climate changes will occur and what forms it might take.
This makes it impossible to say with high confidence how much human factors might influence climate change."
"The first thing is to do no harm. With the threat of catastrophic climate change, many proposals have been put forward to limit energy use."
"A fundamental point that needs to be understood
is that if any of these proposals (including the Kyoto protocol) are implemented,
they will have an effect on the climate so small that it cannot be detected.
None of these proposals will change what the climate is doing enough to notice."
"Those are good reasons not to artificially force energy prices up. While raising energy costs might damage the economy, it would disproportionately hurt the poor, especially those people living on the world's social and economic fringes."
"While the extent of human impacts on global climate change remains uncertain,
research by our colleagues at UAH confirms that deforestation and land conversion
are changing regional weather patterns and the local climate over some parts of the world.
We should encourage and support the scientists and engineers who will develop new sources of low-cost energy."
"Ironically, actions that artificially inflate the cost of energy might hamper those efforts, as healthy economies can better afford to find and develop alternative energy sources and cleaner energy technologies."
Published in
"Taking Earth's temperature"
(University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH) [Internet Archive Wayback Machine]
Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously
by Richard S. Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Energy & Environment, Volume 18 No. 7+8 2007
"In science, there is an art to simplifying complex problems so that they can be meaningfully analyzed. If one oversimplifies, the analysis is meaningless. If one doesn't simplify, then one often cannot proceed with the analysis. When it comes to global warming due to the greenhouse effect, it is clear that many approaches are highly oversimplified."
"Using basic theory, modeling results and observations, we can reasonably bound the anthropogenic contributions to surface warming since 1979 to a third of the observed warming, leading to a climate sensitivity too small to offer any significant measure of alarm - assuming current observed surface and tropospheric trends and model depictions of greenhouse warming are correct."
"We next showed that the defense of the attribution of recent warming to man involves an observed warming that is smaller than expected, and where the attribution, itself, depends on relatively subjective claims concerning the ability of current models to accurately portray natural unforced climate variability. Thus, the claim that models cannot account for recent warming without external forcing is held to imply the role of human forcing. To be sure, current models can simulate the recent trend in surface temperature, but only by invoking largely unknown properties of aerosols and ocean delay in order to cancel most of the greenhouse warming. Finally, we note substantial corroborating work showing low climate sensitivity."
"Ultimately, however, one must recognize how small the difference is between the estimation that the anthropogenic contribution to recent surface warming is on the order of 1/3, and the iconic claim that it is likely that the human contribution is more that 1/2. Alarm, we see, actually demands much more that the iconic statement itself. It requires that greenhouse warming actually be larger than what has been observed, that about half of it be cancelled by essentially unknown aerosols, and that the aerosols soon disappear. Alarm does not stem directly from the iconic claim, but rather from the uncertainty in the claim, which lumps together greenhouse gas additions and the cancelling aerosol contributions (assuming that they indeed cancel warming), and suggests that the sum is responsible for more than half of the observed surface warming. What this paper attempts to do is point the way to a simple, physically sound approach to reducing uncertainty and establishing estimates of climate sensitivity that are focused and testable. Such an approach would seem to be more comfortable for science than the current emphasis on models testing models, large ranges of persistent uncertainty, and reliance on alleged consensus. Hopefully, this paper has also clarified why significant doubt persists concerning the remarkably politicized issue of global warming alarm."
From Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously (.pdf, 968 KB) at Publications by Lindzen, Richard S. Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
See also Lindzen: Earth is never in equilibrium, Richard S. Lindzen, Watts Up With That?, April 9 2010
Man-made global warming has not been scientifically proven,
while significant reasons for considering this hypothesis as incorrect have been presented:
The Polish Academy of Sciences:
"The Earth's climate has predominantly been warmer than at present. However, there has been some significant cooling that resulted in the development of extensive glaciations, in some of which ice sheets even reached the tropics. Therefore, any reliable forecasts of climate change, before discussion of prevention or neutralization, should take into account evidence from the geological past when, obviously, neither humans nor industry affected the Earth."
"During the last 400 thousand years - still without anthropogenic greenhouse influence - the content of carbon dioxide in the air, as indicated by ice cores from Antarctica, was repeatedly 4 times at similar or even slightly higher level than at present."
"In the past millennium, after warm medieval ages, by the end of the 13th century a cold period started and lasted up to the middle of the 19th century, then gave pace to another warm period in which we are living now. The phenomena observed today, specifically a temporary rise of global temperature, just reflect a natural rhythm of climate change."
"Instrumental monitoring of climate parameters has been carried out for only slightly more than 200 years and exclusively on some parts of the continents that constitute a small part of the Earth. Several older measurement stations once set up in suburbs now appear, due to progressive urbanization, in the town centers which results among other effects in increased values of the measured temperatures. Profound examination of the oceans was initiated 40 years ago. Reliable climatic models must not be based on such a short measurement data base. Therefore, considerable restraint is desirable if ascribing exclusive or predominant responsibility to man for increased emission of greenhouse gases. The reality of such arbitrary statement on human influence has not been demonstrated."
"It is certain that increased content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is connected partly with human activity. Therefore, all steps that restrain this emission and agree with principles of sustainable development should be taken, starting from a cease of extensive deforestation, especially in tropical areas."
See Attitude of the Committee of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences to the question of impending of global warming (February 12 '09, .pdf)
"Climategate":
E-mails leaked out of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) (University of East Anglia, UK)
on November 19, 2009, show scientists colluding to distort data to favor the man-made global warming hypothesis
and suppress opinion and scientific works opposing it.
Scientists from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia are leading authors and contributors of the
IPCC Assessment Reports on Climate Change
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNEP).
These distorted data are the "physical" basis for "Global Warming" and "Climate Change".
See East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) - Emails/Documents - AKA Climategate (Searchable)
"The only reasonable explanation for the archive being in this state is that the FOI Officer at the University was practising due diligence.
The UEA was collecting data that couldn't be sheltered and they created FOIA2009.zip."
[FOI = Freedom Of Information]
"It is most likely that the FOI Officer at the University put it on an anonymous ftp server or that it resided on a shared folder that many people had access to and some curious individual looked at it."
"Occam’s razor concludes that "the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one". The simplest explanation in this case is that someone at UEA found it and released it to the wild and the release of FOIA2009.zip wasn’t because of some hacker, but because of a leak from UEA by a person with scruples."
See Comprehensive network analysis shows Climategate likely to be a leak (Lance Levsen, Network Analyst. Watts Up With That?, Dec. 7 '09)
See
Climate Emails Stoke Debate
(Keith Johnson, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 23 '09)
See
What the Global Warming Emails Reveal
(Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 24 '09)
See
The Climate Science Isn't Settled
(Richard S. Lindzen, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1 '09)
See
Climategate: Follow the Money
(Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1 '09)
See
How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus
(Patrick J. Michaels, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17 '09)
See
The Continuing Climate Meltdown
(Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 16 '10)
See
The Climategate Whitewash Continues
(Patrick J. Michaels, The Wall Street Journal, Jul. 18 '10)
"This is one of the darkest periods in the history of science.
Those who love science, and all it stands for, will be pained by what they read below.
However, the crisis is here, and cannot be avoided."
See Climategate analysis (John P. Costella, Ph.D.) (E-mails and other documents)
Is the science concerning the current concerns about climate change sound?
Many people, starting with the members of the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee,
had hoped this question would be answered during the inquiry process,
and there is a frequent refrain in the media that the investigations affirmed the science.
But the reality is that none of the inquiries actually investigated the science.
See McKitrick: Understanding the Climategate Inquiries (Watts Up With That? September 15 '10)
See Understanding the Climategate Inquiries (.pdf, Ross McKitrick, September 2010)
See
The Climategate Inquiries
(A.W. Montford, GWPF Reports, 14 September 2010)
"Climategate 2":
"Early this morning, history repeated itself.
FOIA.org has produced an enormous zip file of 5,000 additional emails
similar to those released two years ago in November 2009 and coined 'Climategate'.
There are almost 1/4 million additional emails locked behind a password, which the organization does not plan on releasing at this time."
See Climategate 2.0 emails (Watts Up With That, News Staff, November 22, 2011)
See Mr. David Palmer Explains The Problem (Watts Up With That, Willis Eschenbach, November 23, 2011)
See Climategate 2.0: the not nice and clueless Phil Jones (The Telegraph, James Delingpole, November 24, 2011)
See Climategate 2.0 (The Wall Street Journal, James Delingpole, November 28, 2011)
See The Great Global Warming Fizzle (The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, November 29, 2011)
"Climategate 2" | FOIA 2011 Searchable Database:
"This website is provided as a research resource for mining the recently leaked climate communications. Every effort has been made to redact personal contact information such as email addresses and telephone numbers. The redaction algorithms are currently tuned to be quite stringent, and they will inadvertently obfuscate other details as well. We will continue to tune the software to improve the quality of the results."
"This database was assembled in a very short space of time, and at present only provides the most rudimentary tools for exploring this vast trove of material. We will be improving the quality of the search tools and adding further metadata to the database over the course of the next few weeks."
See Climategate 2 | FOIA 2011 Searchable Database
Welcome to the ClimateGate FOIA Grepper !!!
"This is a searchable service of both ClimateGate I and II emails. All full emails, telephone numbers and passwords have been redacted (replaced with ???). Note: you can still search by them if you know them, they just won't show in the results."
"If you're wondering why this is on an Eco site it's because we are interested in fact led research and development that leads to a better future for all; ClimateGate is very indicative that at the very core of climate research the high standards that we all expected for such core research are not being upheld."
"Behind the scenes, I've been playing with a new neat tool for hunting hypocrisy, corruption, bias and unprofessional behaviour
and I'm pleased to announce it's ready to share with the world.
The kudos for this all belongs to, as usual, a skilled volunteer. Thanks to EcoGuy for turning his rapid-fire coding ability onto this."
"On the EcoWho site he has helpfully placed all of Climategate I and II together into a combined searchable database. It's fast, easy to scan, it copes with tricky search requests and provides a link to the full email from the results page of the search."
See Hot new search tool for Climategate - I and II combined (Jo Nova, November 25, 2011)
Cold Facts on Global Warming:
"What is the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to global warming?
This question has been the subject of many heated arguments, and a great deal of hysteria.
In this article, we will consider a simple estimate based on well-accepted facts,
that shows that the expected global temperature increase caused by doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels
is bounded by an upper limit of 1.76 ±0.27 degrees Celsius.
This result contrasts with the results of the IPCC's climate models,
whose projections are shown to be unrealistically high.
Even though global warming has become mostly an academic concern now that the climate has moved into a cooling phase,
it's still important to understand what is and is not factual about the climate."
"Although carbon dioxide is capable of raising the Earth's overall temperature, the IPCC's predictions of catastrophic temperature increases produced by carbon dioxide have been challenged by many scientists. In particular, the importance of water vapor is frequently overlooked by environmental activists and by the media. This discussion shows that the large temperature increases predicted by many computer models are unphysical and inconsistent with results obtained by basic measurements. Skepticism is warranted when considering computer-generated projections of global warming that cannot even predict existing observations."
From Cold Facts on Global Warming (T.J. Nelson, Ph.D. in biophysics)
Science is not based on models but on autentic measurements. Models must be based on science, not the other way around.
The climate in Venus is not controlled by an atmospheric 'greenhouse effect' even though CO2 is near 97% in its atmosphere,
because the surface of Venus receives no direct sunshine.
The Venusian atmosphere is full of dense, high clouds;
30 to 40 Km thick with bases at 30 or 35 Km of altitude. Venusian climate is controlled by atmospheric pressure.
Venus has an extremely high atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 92 times greater than on Earth,
and the surface temperature of Venus is 460°C.
On Earth's atmosphere, CO2 is some 0.06% in volume; surely not enough to cause a catastrophyc 'greenhouse effect'.
According to some global climatologists and the IPCC climate models,
there would be a positive feedback action amplifying the CO2 effect to be much more potent,
but this theoretical effect has not been actually measured in practice.
Understanding that a trace amount of CO2 can not be a main cause of a catastrophyc atmospheric 'greenhouse effect' means we are more in control of the quality of the air. We are more responsible for our planet regarding the atmospheric pollution we cause, and pollution must be minimized for the water and the ground too, and extensive deforestation must cease.
References:
AccuWeather.com: Global Climate Change Blog
An Honest Climate Debate
(Exposing the truth about the Man-Made Climate Change theory)
Anthropogenic Global Warming - Fact or Hoax?
(A Middlebury Community Network editorial by James A. Peden)
Bishop Hill blog (A.W. Montford)
- Las Investigaciones del Climategate
(A.W. Montford, GWPF Reports, 14 de Septiembre 2010)
Bob Tisdale - Climate Observations
Burt Rutan on Climate Change
C3 Headlines (Climate Cycle Changes)
Calamitology.com
(Steve Schulin, Discussion of exaggerated claims about climate science)
Calder's Updates:
Climate Change (Nigel Calder)
Carlin Economics and Science
(Dr. Alan Carlin, Ph.D. in Economics, B.S. in Physics)
- Why a Copernican Revolution Is Needed in Climate Change Research
(December 28, 2011)
Christopher Booker's comment, columns and opinion
(Telegraph.co.uk)
Climate (Rick Werme)
Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre)
Climate Change (by Erl Happ and Carl Wolk)
Climate Change Dispatch (Because the debate is NOT over)
Climate Change Reconsidered
(Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change [NIPCC])
- 2011 Interim Report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
Climate Data Information (Ron Manley and Pat Reynolds)
Climate Etc. (Dr. Judith Curry)
Climategate (Anthropogenic Global Warming, history's biggest scam)
Climate Observations (Notes From Bob Tisdale on Climate Change and Global Warming)
ClimateQuotes (Catalog of statements concerning climate change)
Climate Realists (Real explanations as to what has made our climate change)
- My Position on Climate Change, By Hendrik Tennekes
(July 15 '08)
Climate Research News (Bridging the gap between reality and official science)
Climate Review
(Home of the movie "Church of Global Warming", James Follett, 1hr. - Free)
ClimateSanity (Tom Moriarty)
Climate Scam (Review of the Climate Change News)
Climate Science (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Climate Skeptic (Warren Meyer)
Clive Best
co2 (Antón Uriarte, San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa, España)
- Historia del clima de la Tierra
- Earth's Climate History
CO2 and the 'Greenhouse Effect' Doom (by Tom V. Segalstad)
Co2 Insanity (the insanity surrounding Anthropogenic Global Warming)
CO2 Science
(Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Sherwood B. Idso, President)
- Carbon Dioxide and Earth's Future: Pursuing the Prudent Path
- Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming
- Cosmic Rays vs. CO2: The Battle for Climate Change Primacy
Cold Facts on Global Warming (T.J. Nelson, Ph.D. in biophysics)
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) (David Rothbard and Craig Rucker)
- Climate Depot (Marc Morano)
- Special Report: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
- The EPA Unrelenting Power-Grab (Paul Driessen)
conscious
(Protecting freedom by understanding climate, The UN IPCC Exposed. Malcolm Roberts, V. Gray, J. McLean)
Curious Anomalies in Climate Science
DenialDepot (Blog Science for Real People)
Die Klimazwiebel (Eduardo Zorita and Hans von Storch)
Don J. Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus
(Department of Geology, Western Washington University)
- Research: Global climate change, global warming/cooling
Dr. Tim Ball (A Different Perspective)
Ecotretas
Enthusiasm, Scepticism and Science
(The origins and impacts of Global Warming Alarmism, Bernie Lewin)
Errors in IPCC climate science (Warwick Hughes, Douglas Hoyt)
Friends of Science (Providing Insight into Global Warming)
George C. Marshall Institute - Climate Science
- Are Human Activities Causing Global Warming?
by Dr. Sallie Baliunas, January 1, 1995
- The Truth About Greenhouse Gases
by Dr. William Happer, May 23, 2011
Global Temperature Report (UAHuntsville Earth System Science Center)
Global Warming.org (May Cooler Heads Prevail)
Global Warming at a glance (JunkScience.com)
Global Warming blog by John Coleman
(KUSI TV, San Diego, California)
Global Warming - Introduction
(West Virginia Plant Fossils)
- Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers
- Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective
Global Warming Issues (Dr. John McLean)
Global Warming Science
(Applied Information Systems - AppInSys, Alan Cheetham)
- AIS Climate Data Visualizer
(Global Historical Climate Network temperature data graphing - from NOAA, HadCRU)
Heretical Thoughts About Science And Society
(Edge: Freeman Dyson, Aug. 8 '07)
Hide the decline (Frank Lansner and Nicolai Skjoldby)
Ice Age Now (Robert W. Felix)
Institute for Energy Research (IER)
International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP)
(Joseph D'Aleo, Executive Director)
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) (Tom Harris, Executive Director)
Is there global cooling? (Geoff Pohanka)
James Delingpole's comment, columns and opinion
(Telegraph.co.uk)
Jennifer Marohasy / Blog (Australian Environment Foundation)
JoNova
- The Skeptics Handbook
Knowledge Drift; The Science of Human Error
(How bad knowledge contaminates good data, David M. Hoffer)
Landshape (niche modeling) (Current scientific issues, prediction)
Marlo Lewis, Jr. (Senior Fellow, Center for Energy and Environment)
MasterResource (A free-market energy blog)
Michael Crichton - The Official Site:
Videos
- State of Fear - Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW)
- Hide the Decline - Climategate (Musical Video, YouTube)
New Zealand Climate Change (Climate Change Questions)
New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (Commonsense about Climate Change)
Nicola Scafetta, PhD (Assistant Adjunct Professor, Duke University)
No Cap and Trade (Facts, not Fiction on Climate Change)
- Hide the Decline - Climategate (Musical Videos)
NOconsensus.org
(No Scientific Consensus on Global Warming. Donna Laframboise, Toronto, Canada)
- A Book is Born: The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert (an IPCC Exposé)
Omniclimate (The Unbearable Nakedness of Climate Change. Maurizio Morabito)
P Gosselin - NoTricksZone (Climate News from Germany in English. Pierre Gosselin)
Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter Biography
(Author of Climate: the Counter Consensus)
- Ten Facts about Climate Change They Don't Want You to Know
Quadrant Online - Doomed Planet
- Climate Modelling Nonsense
(by Dr. John Reid, October, 2009)
- Global warming: 10 little facts
(by Prof. Bob Carter, March 14, 2011)
Real Science (Steven Goddard)
Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog
Ross McKitrick (Annotated Index to Publications and Papers)
- Independent Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (ISPM)
(Ross McKitrick, Editor, 2007)
- Critical Topics in Global Warming
(Fraser Institute, Ross McKitrick, Editor, 2009)
Roy Spencer, Ph. D.
(Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville - UAH)
- Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures
San Francisco Environmental Policy Examiner
(Thomas Fuller)
Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI)
- 35 Inconvenient Truths: The errors in Al Gore's movie
(Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Oct. 19 '07)
- Three Essays on Climate Models
(Dr. Henk Tennekes, 30 January 2009)
- Three Speeches by Michael Crichton
(Michael Crichton, December 11, 2009)
- two dead elephants in parliament
(Malcolm Roberts, February 7, 2010)
- Response to John Abraham
(Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, July 12 '10)
ScienceBits (Prof. Nir J. Shaviv, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Science Speak (David Evans, Joanne Nova. Perth, Western Australia)
Seminole County Environmental News Examiner
(Kirk Myers)
- New research into greenhouse effect challenges theory of man-made global warming
(Dr. F. Miskolczi, Feb. 9 '10)
- Former NASA scientist defends theory refuting global warming doctrine
(Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, February 12 '10)
Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Shub Niggurath Climate
Socrates Paradox (to promote integrity in science)
Solar Chords (Climate Change Explained, Frederick Bailey)
Solar Cycle 25 (a switch to a much cooler climate)
Syun-Ichi Akasofu - Notes on Climate Change
Talking About the Weather (by Harold Ambler)
The Air Vent (by Jeff Id. Closed on January 21, 2011)
The Blackboard (by Lucia)
The Carbon Sense Coalition
The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming
(Michael Crichton, National Press Club, January 25, 2005)
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) (Director: Dr Benny Peiser)
- Andrew Montford: The Climategate Inquiries
(A.W. Montford, GWPF Reports, 14 September 2010)
- Andrew Montford: Las Investigaciones del Climategate
(A.W. Montford, GWPF Reports, 14 de Septiembre 2010)
- Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society
(IPPC News, 6 October 2010)
The Great Global Warming Swindle
(A Documentary by Martin Durkin, Produced by WAGTV)
The Heartland Institute
- Environment & Climate News
- Global Warming Facts
- climatewiki.org (Encyclopedia of climate change)
The Hockey Schtick (The Travesty of Global Cooling - 12 Years & Counting)
The Inconvenient Skeptic (John Kehr)
- The Inconvenient Skeptic: The Comprehensive Guide to the Earth's Climate
(John Kehr, 2011)
The Real Inconvenient Truth: Greenhouse, global warming and some facts
(JunkScience.com)
The Resilient Earth (Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity)
- The Resilient Earth
(.pdf Downloadable Book. Doug L. Hoffman & Allen Simmons, 2008 - Free)
The View From Here (Hilary Ostrov, Vancouver, Canada)
- AccessIPCC (IPCC's 4th Assessment Report - Annotated)
Walter E. Williams
(Department of Economics, George Mason University. Selected Syndicated Columns)
Watts Up With That? (by Anthony Watts)
- Atmosphere Reference Page
(Atmosphere current graphs and imagery)
- ENSO (El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation) Page
(Ocean temperature and oscillation patterns)
- Global Sea Ice Reference Page
(Arctic and Antarctic current graphs and imagery)
- Global Temperature Page
(Global Temperature current graphs and imagery)
- Ocean Reference Page
(Ocean graphs and imagery)
- Solar Images and Data Page
- surfacestations.org (Climate stations physical site survey data)
Weather Action (by Piers Corbyn, Astrophysicist, Meteorologist)
WeatherBell (Meteorological consulting, Joe Bastardi and Joseph D'Aleo)
- WeatherBell Press
William M. Briggs, Statistician
(Adjunct Professor of Statistical Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York)
Wood for Trees
(Software tools for analysis and graphing of time series data. Paul Clark)
World Climate Report (Chief Editor: Patrick J. Michaels)
Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse
(By Professor R. W. Wood, Philosophical Magazine, 1909. Vol. 17, pp. 319-320) [in tech-archive.net]
The theory of heat radiation
(Max Planck, 1913. M. Masius translation)
Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming
(Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 71, 288-299. Richard S. Lindzen, 1990)
Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase
(By Zbigniew Jaworowski, Ph.D., Spring 1997)
The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change
(Professor R.M. Carter, May 2007)
Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the Earth's climate
(Richard Mackey, Canberra, ACT 2600 Australia, 2007)
Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?
(Richard S. Lindzen, 29 Nov 2008)
Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making
(.pdf, K.C. Green, J.S. Armstrong, W. Soon, International Journal of Forecasting, 2009)
Cada 'empleo verde' que promete Zapatero cuesta 571.138 euros a los españoles
(Gabriel Calzada, Instituto Juan de Mariana, Marzo 30, 2009)
Green Jobs, Ole: Is the Spanish Clean-Energy Push a Cautionary Tale?
(Keith Johnson, The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2009)
The Thermostat Hypothesis
(Willis Eschenbach, Watts Up With That?, June 14 '09)
Thriving with Nature and Humanity
(.pdf, Malcom Roberts, 2009. New Zealand Climate Science Coalition)
Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong
(Jade Boyd, Rice University News, Jul. 14 '09)
What happened to global warming?
(BBC NEWS | Science & Environment, Oct. 9 '09)
Not Evil Just Wrong - Blog
(The true cost of global warming hysteria)
- Not Evil Just Wrong
(Documentary film, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, Oct. 18 '09)
The real climate change catastrophe
(Christopher Booker, Telegraph.co.uk, Oct. 25 '09)
Climategate: CRU Was But the Tip of the Iceberg
(Marc Sheppard, American Thinker, Jan. 22 '10)
Wind power Is No Solution To Anything
(A Guest Weblog By Henk Tennekes, March 3, 2010)
CO2 heats the atmosphere...a counter view
(Tom Vonk, Watts Up With That?, August 5 '10)
The Truth About Greenhouse Gases
(First Things, June/July 2011, William Happer, Princeton University)
How Scientific Is Climate Science?
(Douglas Keenan, The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2011)
The Chaos theoretic argument that undermines Climate Change modelling
(Andy Edmonds PhD, 13 June 2011)
It's Not About Feedback
(Willis Eschenbach, Watts Up With That?, August 14 '11)
Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming
(Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2012)
The Anthropogenic Climate-Change Debate Continues
(Letters, The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2012)
Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming
(Letters, The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2012)
Centre for Ocean and Ice (COI) (Danish Meteorological Institute)
Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) (Florida State University)
- Ryan N. Maue's Meteorology (Research Meteorological Maps)
- Ryan N. Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update
Climate Change (NASA)
Climate Prediction Center (CPC) (NOAA)
Climatic Research Unit (CRU) (University of East Anglia, UK)
Daily AMSR-E sea ice maps:
Arctic,
Antarctic sea ice extent (University of Bremen, Germany)
Daily Updated Time series of Arctic sea ice area and extent derived from SSMI data provided by NERSC (Arctic ROOS)
Data of Sea Ice Extent
[AMSR-E in the Arctic Ocean] (IARC-JAXA)
Distributed Information Services for Climate and Ocean Products and Visualizations for Earth Research (DISCOVER)
- Daily Earth Temperatures from Satellites
(AMSU-A Temperatures, University of Alabama in Huntstville - UAH)
Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA)
- Earth System Research Laboratory Global Monitoring Division
- El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
- Earth System Research Laboratory: Physical Sciences Division
El Niño: online meteorology guide
(WW2010, University of Illinois)
El Niño and La Niña: Tracing the Dance of Ocean and Atmosphere
(The National Academies)
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)
(NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
Global Warming (NASA Worldbook)
Global Warming Facts, Causes, Effects, Solutions
(National Geographic)
Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) Project
(JAXA, NIES, MOE. Japan)
IPCC Reports - Climate Change
(UNEP)
- Vital Climate Graphics - Update 2005 (UNEP/GRID-Arendal)
JetStream - An Online School for Weather (National Weather Service)
KNMI Climate Explorer (Web application for statistical analysis of climate data)
National Climatic Data Center (NCDC),
State of the Climate,
Extremes (NOAA)
National Snow Analyses
NOAA-NWS National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC)
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
- Sea Ice Index (Artic/Antartic, Monthly/Daily)
National Weather Service (NWS) Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA)
North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)
(Ian Bell, Martin Visbeck, Columbia University)
North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (David B. Stephenson, Exeter University)
Observing the Earth - Understanding Our Planet (European Space Agency - ESA)
Ocean Indicators (El Niño Bulletin, Mean Sea Level - AVISO)
Ocean Observations Panel for Climate (OOPC) (UNESCO)
Ocean Surface Topography from Space (NASA-JPL, TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason)
PALEOMAP Project (Earth & Climate History, Christopher R. Scotese)
Polar Science Center
(Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS), University of Washington)
Polar Sea Ice Cap and Snow - Cryosphere Today,
Global Sea Ice Area
(University of Illinois)
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) University of Miami
- Ocean Surface Currents (CIMAS)
Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab
Securing Our Environment (European Space Agency - ESA)
Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC) (Royal Observatory of Belgium)
Solar Physics (Marshall Space Flight Center)
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
(Frank L. Lambert, Professor Emeritus, Occidental College, Los Angeles)
The Sun and the Earth's Climate
(Sami K. Solanki, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research)
Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) Project (Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array, NOAA)
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) (NASA - JAXA)
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) (Independent Statistics and Analysis)
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (United Nations)
Musical Theme:
Santana - You've got to Change Your Evil Ways - Lissajous Patterns showing complex phase L and R chs
(Tektronix 465B Oscilloscope, YouTube)
Observatorio ARVAL - Meteorology for South Florida and the Caribbean - Global Warming?
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