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The irony of global warmists now becoming the “hiatus deniers”

September 1, 2013

Denying the hiatus without being seen to deny it is now becoming the most important task facing the IPCC global warmists, That the “missing heat” cannot be found is a “travesty”! It could be hiding in the deep oceans or maybe it is in the deep mantle. It can’t be in the upper atmosphere because there we have measurements.

Perhaps it is just not there but that would be too simple!

The high priests of global warming are all joining the cult of the “hiatus deniers”.

Reblogged from P. Gosselin at NoTricksZone:

Die Welt Veteran Journalist: “Ignoring Warming Stop Would Be Ridiculous”, Missing Heat “Perhaps Just Doesn’t Exist”

Veteran journalist Ulli Kulke at German national daily Die Welt has a commentary at his Die Welt blog about the upcoming IPCC report. IPCC: Discuss or Ignore Warming Stop. He starts:

According to News Service Bloomberg it is currently being discussed whether to mention the ongoing 15-year pause in global in the 5th Assessment Report“ (AR 5) to be released in late September, or if perhaps it would be better to simply ignore it in order not to unnecessarily supply so-called ‘climate skeptics’ with ammunition.”

Alarmist scientists find themselves in a dilemma and aren’t sure what to do. They are eager to argue back against skeptics’s claims that the warming has stopped, yet are petrified of bringing it up. Some are saying it is simply best to ignore the pause in warming. But Kulke writes:

The attempt to keep the warming pause out of the ongoing discussion surrounding the upcoming AR 5 would be ridiculous. Semantic and formal splitting of hairs would not stick because it cannot be denied that also the In-group of the IPCC scientists have acknowledged the stop in warming – at least internally – and view this as the biggest problem. It is “a travesty” they cannot explain. That quote comes from Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports. […] In the meantime Trenberth suspects, according to his models, that the missing heat is somewhere in the depths of the oceans. But this is not certain in any way; perhaps it just doesn’t exist.”

Kulke then adds that the IPCC also will not be able to downgrade the warming pause to a mere weather event and claim that it has nothing to do with overall climate:

Just because it is still in the range of weather and has not yet reached the time span that one uses to discuss climate, ignoring the warming stop would also be outrageous because it would mean you couldn’t mention any weather event that is not at least 30 years long.”

If increasing frequency is the test that alarmists like to use, then it’s tough to get more frequent than every year over the last 15. You can’t claim a team is in a slump-trend after it has just won 15 games in a row.

For the alarmist IPCC scientists, it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. Bringing up the warming stop surely will be ammo for the skeptics, but so would ignoring it. Should we feel sorry for them? I don’t think so. It was they themselves who maneuvered their own jewels between the jaws of the vise. Last chance to pull them out!

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Global warming missing in South America

September 1, 2013

It’s only weather of course but the current winter in South America affords no evidence of global warming. The heat – if it is there – is extremely well hidden.

  1. It is cold that is far more deadly than warmth;
  2. it is only the availability of affordable energy which can help us ward off the cold;
  3. And it is only conventional energy sources (fossil, nuclear and hydro) whic are both available and affordable

Snow grips South American countries
Chile cold snap deaths total 16
Cold snap kills nine in Argentina

Peru snow state of emergency extended to more regions

The Peruvian government has extended to nine more regions a state of emergency called to cope with unusually cold weather and heavy snowfall. At least two people have died and 33,000 others have been affected by the cold spell, local officials say.

Tens of thousands of animals have frozen to death over the past week. President Ollanta Humala has travelled to Apurimac, one of the worst-hit areas, to oversee the distribution of emergency aid.

The state of emergency would be in place for 20 days, an official statement said. 

The heaviest snow fall to hit Peru in a decade has killed tens of thousands of llamas, alpacas, cattle and sheep, and left farmers destitute. A man died when the roof of his hut caved in under the weight of the snow in southern Carabaya province but the circumstances of the second death were unclear. Three people were rescued on Saturday from the same region after their home was cut off by snow. Rescue workers said the three, two girls and an elderly woman, were suffering from frostbite and snow blindness.

The cold front has also hit Peru’s south-eastern neighbour, Bolivia, and Paraguay, where a combined total of five people have died.

A woman walks along a snowy road on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia on 25 August 2013

A woman walks along a snowy road on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia on 25 August 2013 (BBC)

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Nature Editorial – All change but no change (because the heat is hidden)

August 29, 2013

A very peculiar Nature Editorial.

First they confirm that there has been a hiatus in global temperature.Then they report on recent papers trying to invoke ocean cycles and their impact on global temperatures. This is followed by a claim that this does not explain the “missing heat” but fail to say that there may be no “missing heat” at all if global warming has slowed-down or ceased. By assuming that there must be “missing heat” they then claim that the underlying science has not changed. The key point of course is that if ocean cycles can cause global cooling they can also cause global warming. Natural processes can then well explain all the temperature observations of the last 150 years. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and the 5% of global emission that is man-made emissions of carbon dioxide become irrelevant and unnecessary to the explanations for changes to climate.

“Hidden heat” that cannot be found is just a convenient excuse to avoid having to scrap most of the existing climate models. And what Nature fails to mention is that if there is no “missing heat” then the entire edifice that is the man-made global warming hypothesis comes crashing down.

Nature: Hidden heat

Nature 500, 501 (29 August 2013), doi:10.1038/500501a

This week, Nature publishes a study online suggesting that a recent cooling trend in the tropical Pacific Ocean can explain the current hiatus in global warming. Authored by a pair of scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, the paper does not say why the Pacific seems to have entered a prolonged ‘La Niña’ phase, in which cooler surface waters gather in the eastern equatorial Pacific. It is also silent on where the missing heat is going. But it does suggest that this phenomenon — affecting as little as 8% of Earth’s surface — could temporarily counteract the temperature increase expected from rising greenhouse-gas emissions

(Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie  Nature, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12534; 2013).

Previous modelling studies have linked the pause to La-Niña-like conditions that have prevailed since 1999, suggesting that heat that would otherwise go into the atmosphere is getting buried deeper in the ocean. And scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, have a study in the press indicating that decades in which global air temperature rises rapidly — including the 1980s and 1990s — are associated with warmer temperatures in the tropical Pacific, as exemplified by La Niña’s opposite effect, El Niño (G. A. Meehl et al. J. Climate http://doi.org/nkw; 2013). The Scripps researchers also confirmed that El-Niño-like conditions can boost global temperatures.

Scientists seem to be homing in on an important lever in the climate system. And none too soon. Although a prolonged hiatus in warming does not necessarily contradict prevailing theory, this one came as a surprise and has been used to discredit the climate-science community. The story will probably not end there. Scientists know that the Sun has been in a prolonged solar minimum for several years, which means less incoming energy, and there may yet be a role for sunlight-blocking aerosols — human pollution and volcanic ash — and other factors in the hiatus. But at least a better explanation of the climate system is beginning to take shape.

All of this comes as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepares to release the first instalment of its fifth assessment report. The hiatus in warming is at the centre of an ongoing debate about ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, which is the amount of warming that would be expected over the long term owing to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Several papers have assessed the most recent data and conclude that the climate may not be as sensitive to greenhouse gases as was previously thought. The latest draft of the IPCC summary for policy-makers accounts for this — just. It suggests a likely climate sensitivity of 1.5–4.5 °C, compared with a range of 2–4.5 °C in the IPCC’s last assessment report.

Some argue that recent temperature trends show that the climate problem is less urgent. One can only hope that this is so, and scientists will continue to probe the matter. But policy-makers would be foolhardy to think that the danger has receded. Although scientists understand the basic physics, nobody can know how the numbers will turn out, as shown by the various temperature projections. Plenty of other lines of evidence, including palaeoclimate data and modern modelling experiments, support the higher end of these.

Ultimately, the decision over how to characterize climate sensitivity will fall to government officials who will approve — under the watchful eye of scientists — the latest IPCC documents in Stockholm next month. Whatever their decision, the underlying science has not changed.

This 2007 ClimateGate quote seems timely:

“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably…”

[Via Barry Woods; Tommy Wills, Swansea University to the mailing list for tree-ring data forum ITRDB, 28 Mar 2007]

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Global warming hiatus confirmed – now the Pacific is to “blame”

August 28, 2013

Speculation is rife as to why there has been no global warming for the last 17 or 18 years. Some of this speculation is by those who believe the science is settled and is merely to try and “save” the discredited climate models used by the IPCC. Others – the real scientists – actually use it as an opportunity to investigate something that is not very well understood at all.

The lack of warming has been “blamed” on a variety of reasons. Some have blamed mysterious heat storage in the deep ocean where the heat has actually been transported from and through colder temperatures to higher temperatures! Others say that aerosols and soot in the atmosphere – due to pollution – have distorted the warming trend by hiding the sun. Some few point out that the models really don’t know how to treat clouds and moisture in the atmosphere and what actually drives cloud formation is still an unknown unknown. And there are those – like me – who put it down to natural variation which in turn is ultimately driven – via many still unknown mechanisms – by the Sun.

The El Nino-Southern Oscillation, has a major impact on global climate and is usually acknowledged but a new paper in Nature now suggests that the lack of warming is due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that lasts for a much longer period of time (15 – 30 years).  There may well be some influence of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and no doubt it should be investigated further. But it does first need an acknowledgement that there is something to be investigated. As the authors begin “Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming”.

Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Xie, Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling, Nature Letter (2013),

doi:10.1038/nature12534

Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming. Various mechanisms have been proposed for this hiatus in global warming, but their relative importance has not been quantified, hampering observational estimates of climate sensitivity. Here we show that accounting for recent cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific reconciles climate simulations and observations. We present a novel method of uncovering mechanisms for global temperature change by prescribing, in addition to radiative forcing, the observed history of sea surface temperature over the central to eastern tropical Pacific in a climate model. Although the surface temperature prescription is limited to only 8.2% of the global surface, our model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well with correlation coefficient r = 0.97 for 1970–2012 (which includes the current hiatus and a period of accelerated global warming). Moreover, our simulation captures major seasonal and regional characteristics of the hiatus, including the intensified Walker circulation, the winter cooling in northwestern North America and the prolonged drought in the southern USA. Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.

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Integrated Assessment Climate models tell us “very little”

August 24, 2013

Mathematical models are used – and used successfully – everyday in Engineering, Science, Medicine and Business. Their usefulness is determined – and some are extremely useful – by knowing their limitations and acknowledging that they only represent an approximation of real complex systems.  Actual measurements always override the model results and whenever reality does not agree with model predictions it is usually mandatory to adjust the model. Where the adjustments can only be made by using “fudge factors” it is usually necessary to revisit the simplifying assumptions used to formulate the model in the first place.

But this is not how Climate Modelling Works. Reality or actual measurements are not allowed to disturb the model or its results for the far future. Fudge factors galore are introduced to patch over the differences when they appear. The adjustments to the model are just sufficient to cover the observed difference to reality but such that the long-term “result” is maintained.

The assumption that carbon dioxide has a significant role to play in global warming is itself hypothetical. Climate models start with that as an assumption. They don’t address whether there is a link between the two. Some level of warming is assumed to be the consequence of a doubling the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. For the last 17 years global temperature has stood still while carbon dioxide concentration has increased dramatically. There is actually more evidence to hypothesise that there is no link (or a very weak link) between carbon dioxide and global warming than that there is. Nevertheless all climate models start with the built-in assumption that the link exists. And then use the results of the model as proof that the link exists! They are not just cyclical arguments – they are incestuous – or do I mean cannibalistic.

It is bad enough that economic models, developed to count the cost of carbon dioxide are first based on some hypothetical magnitude of the link between carbon dioxide emission and global warming as their starting point. But it gets worse. These “integrated assessment” models then themselves are strewn with new assumptions and further cyclical logic as to how the costs ensue.

A new paper by Prof. Robert Pindyck for the National Bureau of Economic Research takes a less than admiring look at the Integrated Assessment Climate models and their uselessness.

Robert S. Pindyck, Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?, NBER Working Paper No. 19244
Issued in July 2013

(A pdf of the full paper is here: Climate-Change-Policy-What-Do-the-Models-Tell-Us)

Abstract: Very little. A plethora of integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and evaluate alternative abatement policies. These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading.

Even though his assumptions about “climate sensitivity” are somewhat optimistic, he is more concerned with the assumptions made to try and develop the “damage” function to enable the cost to be estimated:

When assessing climate sensitivity, we at least have scientific results to rely on, and can argue coherently about the probability distribution that is most consistent with those results. When it comes to the damage function, however, we know almost nothing, so developers of IAMs [Integrated Assessment Models] can do little more than make up functional forms and corresponding parameter values. And that is pretty much what they have done. …..  

But remember that neither of these loss functions is based on any economic (or other) theory. Nor are the loss functions that appear in other IAMs. They are just arbitrary functions, made up to describe how GDP goes down when T goes up.

…. Theory can’t help us, Nor is data available that could be used to estimate or even roughly calibrate the parameters. As a result, the choice of values for these parameters is essentially guesswork. The usual approach is to select values such that L(T ) for T in the range of 2◦C to 4◦C is consistent with common wisdom regarding the damages that are likely to occur for small to moderate increases in temperature.

…… For example, Nordhaus (2008) points out (page 51) that the 2007 IPCC report states that “global mean losses could be 1–5% GDP for 4◦C of warming.” But where did the IPCC get those numbers? From its own survey of several IAMs. Yes, it’s a bit circular. 

The bottom line here is that the damage functions used in most IAMs are completely made up, with no theoretical or empirical foundation. That might not matter much if we are looking at temperature increases of 2 or 3◦C, because there is a rough consensus (perhaps completely wrong) that damages will be small at those levels of warming. The problem is that these damage functions tell us nothing about what to expect if temperature increases are larger, e.g., 5◦C or more.19 Putting T = 5 or T = 7 into eqn. (3) or (4) is a completely meaningless exercise. And yet that is exactly what is being done when IAMs are used to analyze climate policy.

And he concludes:

I have argued that IAMs are of little or no value for evaluating alternative climate change policies and estimating the SCC. On the contrary, an IAM-based analysis suggests a level of knowledge and precision that is nonexistent, and allows the modeler to obtain almost any desired result because key inputs can be chosen arbitrarily. 

As I have explained, the physical mechanisms that determine climate sensitivity involve crucial feedback loops, and the parameter values that determine the strength of those feedback loops are largely unknown. When it comes to the impact of climate change, we know even less. IAM damage functions are completely made up, with no theoretical or empirical foundation. They simply reflect common beliefs (which might be wrong) regarding the impact of 2◦C or 3◦C of warming, and can tell us nothing about what might happen if the temperature increases by 5◦C or more. And yet those damage functions are taken seriously when IAMs are used to analyze climate policy. Finally, IAMs tell us nothing about the likelihood and nature of catastrophic outcomes, but it is just such outcomes that matter most for climate change policy. Probably the best we can do at this point is come up with plausible estimates for probabilities and possible impacts of catastrophic outcomes. Doing otherwise is to delude ourselves.

….

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Clean air legislation reinstated the global warming suppressed by industrial pollution

August 20, 2013

A fascinating post at WUWT:

The story so far;

  1. The earth was warming naturally after the Little Ice Age (1350 – 1850).
  2. Along came the industrial revolution. Dust and aerosol pollution covered large parts of the earth and blocked out the Sun. This caused a gradually increasing suppression of the global warming that was occurring as the industrialisation of the world proceeded. This suppression reached a maximum during the 1970’s.
  3. Then came clean air legislation around the world, cleaned up the atmosphere and the Earth basked in the sunlight again.

Global warming was rediscovered.

And now as the LIA temperature recovery is coming to a natural end, global temperatures will decrease again.

Well it is a settled science after all.

Shocker: Global warming may simply be an artifact of clean air laws

global-dimming-brightening

Figure 1 from Wild et al 2012 showing radiation balance differences due to aerosols (via WUWT)

 

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Sea level dropped in 2010/11 but only because it rained in Australia!

August 19, 2013

Wonders will never cease! If we just make sure that more moisture is trapped in clouds and that it rains more over land we can prevent sea level rise and even cause sea level to fall

Sea level is rising to catastrophic levels because of global warming and that, of course, is due the our using fossil fuels – or so the global warming theology would have us believe. But sea levels dropped by 0.7mm in 2010/2011. But not to worry. The catastrophe theory remains intact. This was just due to it raining too much over land in Australia and the tropics that year.

A new paper but an old tired song:

John T. Fasullo, Carmen Boening, Felix W. Landerer and R. Steven Nerem, Australia’s unique influence on global sea level in 2010–2011, Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50834

Abstract: In 2011, a significant drop in global sea level occurred that was unprecedented in the altimeter era and concurrent with an exceptionally strong La Niña. This analysis examines multiple datasets in exploring the physical basis for the drop’s exceptional intensity and persistence. Australia’s hydrologic surface mass anomaly is shown to have been a dominant contributor to the 2011 global total and associated precipitation anomalies were among the highest on record. The persistence of Australia’s mass anomaly is attributed to the continent’s unique surface hydrology, which includes expansive arheic and endorheic basins that impede runoff to ocean. Based on Australia’s key role, attribution of sea level variability is addressed. The modulating influences of the Indian Ocean Dipole and Southern Annular Mode on La Niña teleconnections are found to be key drivers of anomalous precipitation in the continent’s interior and the associated surface mass, and sea level responses.

PhysOrg recites the dogma:

When enough raindrops fall over land instead of the ocean, they begin to add up. New research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) shows that when three atmospheric patterns came together over the Indian and Pacific oceans, they drove so much precipitation over Australia in 2010 and 2011 that the world’s ocean levels dropped measurably. Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all of its precipitation from running off into the ocean. 

The 2010-11 event temporarily halted a long-term trend of rising sea levels caused by higher temperatures and melting ice sheets. 

Now that the atmospheric patterns have snapped back and more rain is falling over tropical oceans, the seas are rising again. In fact, with Australia in a major drought, they are rising faster than before.

“It’s a beautiful illustration of how complicated our climate system is,” says NCAR scientist John Fasullo, the lead author of the study. “The smallest continent in the world can affect sea level worldwide. Its influence is so strong that it can temporarily overcome the background trend of rising sea levels that we see with climate change.”

….. As the climate warms, the world’s oceans have been rising in recent decades by just more than 3 millimeters (0.1 inches) annually. This is partly because the heat causes water to expand, and partly because runoff from retreating glaciers and ice sheets is making its way into the oceans.

But for an 18-month period beginning in 2010, the oceans mysteriously dropped by about 7 millimeters (about 0.3 inches), more than offsetting the annual rise.

Fasullo and his co-authors published research last year demonstrating that the reason had to do with the increased rainfall over tropical continents. They also showed that the drop coincided with the atmospheric oscillation known as La Niña, which cooled tropical surface waters in the eastern Pacific and suppressed rainfall there while enhancing it over portions of the tropical Pacific, Africa, South America, and Australia.

But an analysis of the historical record showed that past La Niña events only rarely accompanied such a pronounced drop in sea level. ….

When sea level rises it is due to global warming. But when it falls it is due to too much rain over Australia. Nothing to do with the standstill in global temperatures for the last 17 years of course!

As I posted a month or so ago

Sea levels in the past have been 10 m higher than today and 150 m lower than today.

Alarmism will have us believe that +5 cm ±15 cm in sea level that may actually happen by 2100 will threaten the very existence of humanity!

A new paper from Nils-Axel Mörner.

SEA LEVEL CHANGES PAST RECORDS AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS

……. The Earth’s rate of rotation records a mean acceleration from 1972 to 2012, contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly falling, sea levels.Best estimates for future sea level changes up to the year 2100 are in the range of +5 cm ±15 cm

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“But measuring rainfall is very tricky,” – Kerry Emanuel

August 19, 2013

It’s the tail wagging the dog, or the cart before the horse as the IPCC prepares to publish its report.

It’s the brave new world of Global warming – though global temperatures have been still or have declined slightly over the last 17 years. But it is 95% certain – says the IPCC –  that carbon dioxide is the cause and the world has warmed by 0.8 °C since the 1950’s. But that 95% is plucked from the air. But they are certain – from their models that the world will warm by upto 4°C in the next 100 years — and that carbon dioxide is the cause! We know the cause but we don’t know the effects!

The local effects are elusive.

“But measuring rainfall is very tricky,” said Kerry Emanuel

Reuters: 

Experts surer of manmade global warming but local predictions elusive

Climate scientists are surer than ever that human activity is causing global warming, according to leaked drafts of a major U.N. report, but they are finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades. ….

…. Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.

But they will merely ignore the real observation that global temperatures have not increased for at least 17 years.

“We have got quite a bit more certain that climate change … is largely manmade,” said Reto Knutti, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “We’re less certain than many would hope about the local impacts.”

And gauging how warming would affect nature, from crops to fish stocks, was also proving hard since it goes far beyond physics. “You can’t write an equation for a tree,” he said.

How exactly the certainty increased when temperatures did not go up while carbon dioxide concentration continued to increase is of no consequence – apparently. How certainty increases when the models are diverging more and more from reality is another mystery.

The IPCC report, the first of three to be released in 2013 and 2014, will face intense scrutiny, particularly after the panel admitted a mistake in the 2007 study which wrongly predicted that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. Experts say the error far overestimated the melt and might have been based on a misreading of 2350.

The new study will state with greater confidence than in 2007 that rising manmade greenhouse gas emissions have already meant more heatwaves. But it is likely to play down some tentative findings from 2007, such as that human activities have contributed to more droughts. ….

Drew Shindell, a NASA climate scientist, said the relative lack of progress in regional predictions was the main disappointment of climate science since 2007.

“I talk to people in regional power planning. They ask: ‘What’s the temperature going to be in this region in the next 20-30 years, because that’s where our power grid is?'” he said.

“We can’t really tell. It’s a shame,” said Shindell. Like the other scientists interviewed, he was speaking about climate science in general since the last IPCC report, not about the details of the latest drafts.

WARMING SLOWING

The panel will try to explain why global temperatures, while still increasing, have risen more slowly since about 1998 even though greenhouse gas concentrations have hit repeated record highs in that time, led by industrial emissions by China and other emerging nations.

An IPCC draft says there is “medium confidence” that the slowing of the rise is “due in roughly equal measure” to natural variations in the weather and to other factors affecting energy reaching the Earth’s surface.

Scientists believe causes could include: greater-than-expected quantities of ash from volcanoes, which dims sunlight; a decline in heat from the sun during a current 11-year solar cycle; more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans; or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide.

“It might be down to minor contributions that all add up,” said Gabriele Hegerl, a professor at Edinburgh University. Or maybe, scientists say, the latest decade is just a blip.

Or maybe the Anthropogenic Global Warming meme is just plain wrong.

The main scenarios in the draft, using more complex computer models than in 2007 and taking account of more factors, show that temperatures could rise anywhere from a fraction of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) to almost 5C (9F) this century, a wider range at both ends than in 2007.

The low end, however, is because the IPCC has added what diplomats say is an improbable scenario for radical government action – not considered in 2007 – that would require cuts in global greenhouse gases to zero by about 2070.

Temperatures have already risen by 0.8C (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

Experts say that the big advance in the report, due for a final edit by governments and scientists in Stockholm from September 23-26, is simply greater confidence about the science of global warming, rather than revolutionary new findings.

SEA LEVELS

“Overall our understanding has strengthened,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor at Princeton University, pointing to areas including sea level rise.

An IPCC draft projects seas will rise by between 29 and 82 cm (11.4 to 32.3 inches) by the late 21st century – above the estimates of 18 to 59 cm in the last report, which did not fully account for changes in Antarctica and Greenland.

The report slightly tones down past tentative findings that more intense tropical cyclone are linked to human activities. Warmer air can contain more moisture, however, making downpours more likely in future.

“There is widespread agreement among hurricane scientists that rainfall associated with hurricanes will increase noticeably with global warming,” said Kerry Emanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“But measuring rainfall is very tricky,” he said.

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Increasing Antarctic sea ice correlates with global cooling

August 18, 2013

A new paper shows that for the last 30 years Antarctic ice is increasing and correlates best with a cooling global temperature.

Qi Shu, Fangli Qiao, Zhenya Song and Chunzai Wang, Sea ice trends in the Antarctic and their relationship to surface air temperature during 1979–2009, Clim Dyn (2012) 38:2355–2363, DOI 10.1007/s00382-011-1143-9

Abstract: Surface air temperature (SAT) from four reanalysis/analysis datasets are analyzed and compared with the observed SAT from 11 stations in the Antarctic. It is found that the SAT variation from Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is the best to represent the observed SAT. Then we use the sea ice concentration (SIC) data from satellite measurements, the SAT data from the GISS dataset and station observations to examine the trends and variations of sea ice and SAT in the Antarctic during 1979–2009. The Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) shows an increased trend during 1979–2009, with a trend rate of 1.36 ± 0.43% per decade. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis shows that the rate of the increased trend has been accelerating in the past decade. Antarctic SIE trend depends on the season, with the maximum increase occurring in autumn. If the relationship between SIC and GISS SAT trends is examined regionally, Antarctic SIC trends agree well with the local SAT trends in the most Antarctic regions. That is, Antarctic SIC and SAT show an inverse relationship: a cooling (warming) SAT trend is associated with an upward (downward) SIC trend.

The variations of local SIC and SAT anomalies in autumn during the past 30 years

The variations of local
SIC and SAT anomalies in
autumn during the past 30 years

Summary: ….

The SAT and SIC trends illustrate an inverse relationship in most of the Antarctic regions, especially in summer and autumn. This indicates that a cooling (warming) SAT trend is associated with an upward (downward) SIC trend in the Antarctic. The station observations also confirm the inverse relationship between SAT and SIC. In most of the Antarctic regions, a cooling trend of SAT in summer and autumn is associated with an increased trend of SIC. …

Our analyses show that the relationship between sea ice and SAT trends should be examined regionally rather than integrally.

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Posted in Alarmism, Antarctic, Climate, Geosciences | Comments Off on Increasing Antarctic sea ice correlates with global cooling

Simple harmonic model – without carbon dioxide – fits reality better than the IPCC climate models

August 16, 2013

A new post at the Norwegian GeoForskning (Geological Research) site by Jan-Erik Solheim and Ole Humlum is quite significant I think. Solheim is Professor (emeritus) at  Institutt for teoretisk astrofysikk, University of Oslo while Humlum is professor of Physical Geography at the University of Oslo and an adjunct Professor at UNIS (University Centre in Svalbard). The post shows that a simple harmonic model (movements of the sun, moon and planets together with linear trends) provides a better fit to the global temperature data since 1850 and likely a better predictor than the assembly of 44 climate models used by the IPCC. They find no signal since the 1950’s which could correspond to any significant impact of carbon dioxide concentration and find no need to include such an influence. If such an effect is present its influence is miniscule.

Models need to be parsimonius to exclude parameters and mechanisms whose effects cannot be discerned. Otherwise they cannot be anchored in reality. A problem with many of the so-called climate models is that they include hypothetical effects which cannot be discerned in the available data, then apply forcing feedbacks to such hypothetical effects and then conclude that the results are valid!

If we’d had a warming due to CO2, this should appear as a deviation from the simple harmonic model since 1950. There are no signs of any additional heating due to CO2 as IPCC claims in their reports. Also CO2 effects of climate models for the IPCC based are exaggerated. The net effect of CO2 is thus so modest that it can not be seen in this data.

A simple, empirical, harmonic climate model

by Jan-Erik Solheim and Ole Humlum

(The paper is in Norwegian and this English version is from the HockeySchtick)
(more…)

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