Reposted from Dr. Roy Spencer’s Global Warming Blog.
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
In response to reviewers’ comments on a paper John Christy and I submitted regarding the impact of El Nino and La Nina on climate sensitivity estimates, I decided to change the focus enough to require a total re-write of the paper.
The paper now addresses the question: If we take all of the various surface and sub-surface temperature datasets and their differing estimates of warming over the last 50 years, what does it imply for climate sensitivity?
The trouble with estimating climate sensitivity from observational data is that, even if the temperature observations were globally complete and error-free, you still have to know pretty accurately what the “forcing” was that caused the temperature change.
(Yes, I know some of you don’t like the forcing-feedback paradigm of climate change. Feel free to ignore this post if it bothers you.)
As a reminder, all temperature change in an object or system is due to an imbalance between rates of energy gained and energy lost, and the global warming hypothesis begins with the assumption that the climate system is naturally in a state of energy balance. Yes, I know (and agree) that this assumption cannot be demonstrated to be strictly true, as events like the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age can attest.
But for the purpose of demonstration, let’s assume it’s true in today’s climate system, and that the only thing causing recent warming is anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission (mainly CO2). Does the current rate of warming suggest (as we are told) that a global warming disaster is upon us? I think this is an important question to address, separate from the question of whether some of the recent warming is natural (which would make AGW even less of a problem).
Lewis and Curry (most recently in 2018) addressed the ECS question in a similar manner by comparing temperatures and radiative forcing estimates between the late 1800s and early 2000s, and got answers somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 1.8 deg. C of eventual warming from a doubling of the pre-industrial CO2 concentration (2XCO2). These estimates are considerably lower than what the IPCC claims from (mostly) climate model projections.
Our approach is somewhat different from Lewis & Curry. First, we use only data from the most recent 50 years (1970-2021), which is the period of most rapid growth in CO2-caused forcing, the period of most rapid temperature rise, and about as far back as one can go and talk with any confidence about ocean heat content (a very important variable in climate sensitivity estimates).
Secondly, our model is time-dependent, with monthly time resolution, allowing us to examine (for instance) the recent acceleration in deep ocean temperature (ocean heat content) rise.
In contrast to Lewis & Curry and differencing two time periods’ averages separated by 100+ years, our approach is to use a time-dependent model of vertical energy flows, which I have blogged on before. It is run at monthly time resolution, so allows examination of such issues as the recent acceleration of the increase in oceanic heat content (OHC).
In response to reviewers comments, I extended the domain from non-ice covered (60N-60S) oceans to global coverage (including land), as well as borehole-based estimates of deep-land warming trends (I believe a first for this kind of work). The model remains a 1D model of temperature departures from assumed energy equilibrium, within three layers, shown schematically in Fig. 1.
One thing I learned along the way is that, even though borehole temperatures suggest warming extending to almost 200 m depth (the cause of which seems to extent back several centuries), modern Earth System Models (ESMs) have embedded land models that extend to only 10 m depth or so.
Another thing I learned (in the course of responding to reviewers comments) is that the assumed history of radiative forcing has a pretty large effect on diagnosed climate sensitivity. I have been using the RCP6 radiative forcing scenario from the previous (AR5) IPCC report, but in response to reviewers’ suggestions I am now emphasizing the SSP245 scenario from the most recent (AR6) report.
I run all of the model simulations with either one or the other radiative forcing dataset, initialized in 1765 (a common starting point for ESMs). All results below are from the most recent (SSP245) effective radiative forcing scenario preferred by the IPCC (which, it turns out, actually produces lower ECS estimates).
The Model Experiments
In addition to the assumption that the radiative forcing scenarios are a relatively accurate representation of what has been causing climate change since 1765, there is also the assumption that our temperature datasets are sufficiently accurate to compute ECS values.
So, taking those on faith, let’s forge ahead…
I ran the model with thousands of combinations of heat transfer coefficients between model layers and the net feedback parameter (which determines ECS) to get 1970-2021 temperature trends within certain ranges.
For land surface temperature trends I used 5 “different” land datasets: CRUTem5 (+0.277 C/decade), GISS 250 km (+0.306 C/decade), NCDC v3.2.1 (+0.298 C/decade), GHCN/CAMS (+0.348 C/decade), and Berkeley 1 deg. (+0.280 C/decade).
For global average sea surface temperature I used HadCRUT5 (+0.153 C/decade), Cowtan & Way (HadCRUT4, +0.148 C/decade), and Berkeley 1 deg. (+0.162 C/decade).
For the deep ocean, I used Cheng et al. 0-2000m global average ocean temperature (+0.0269 C/decade), and Cheng’s estimate of the 2000-3688m deep-deep-ocean warming, which amounts to a (very uncertain) +0.01 total warming over the last 40 years. The model must produce the surface trends within the range represented by those datasets, and produce 0-2000 m trends within +/-20% of the Cheng deep-ocean dataset trends.
Since deep-ocean heat storage is such an important constraint on ECS, in Fig. 3 I show the 1D model run that best fits the 0-2000m temperature trend of +0.0269 C/decade over the period 1970-2021.
Finally, the storage of heat in the land surface is usually ignored in such efforts. As mentioned above, climate models have embedded land surface models that extend to only 10 m depth. Yet, borehole temperature profiles have been analyzed that suggest warming up to 200 m in depth (Fig. 4).
This great depth, in turn, suggests that there has been a multi-century warming trend occurring, even in the early 20th Century, which the IPCC ignores and which suggests a natural source for long-term climate change. Any natural source of warming, if ignored, leads to inflated estimates of ECS and of the importance of increasing CO2 in climate change projections.
I used the black curve (bottom panel of Fig. 4) to estimate that the near-surface layer is warming 2.5 times faster than the 0-100 m layer, and 25 times faster than the 100-200 m layer. In my 1D model simulations, I required this amount of deep-land heat storage (analogous to the deep-ocean heat storage computations, but requiring weaker heat transfer coefficients for land and different volumetric heat capacities).
The distributions of diagnosed ECS values I get over land and ocean are shown in Fig. 5.
The final, global average ECS from the central estimates in Fig. 5 is 2.09 deg. C. Again, this is somewhat higher than the 1.5 to 1.8 deg. C obtained by Lewis & Curry, but part of this is due to larger estimates of ocean and land heat storage used here, and I would suspect that our use of only the most recent 50 years of data has some impact as well.
Conclusions
I’ve used a 1D time-dependent model of temperature departures from assumed energy equilibrium to address the question: Given the various estimates of surface and sub-surface warming over the last 50 years, what do they suggest for the sensitivity of the climate system to a doubling of atmospheric CO2?
Using the most recent estimates of effective radiative forcing from Annex III in the latest IPCC report (AR6), the observational data suggest lower climate sensitivities (ECS) than promoted by the IPCC with a central estimate of +2.09 deg C. for the global average. This is at the bottom end of the latest IPCC (AR6) likely range of 2.0 to 4.5 deg. C.
I believe this is still likely an upper bound for ECS, for the following reasons.
- Borehole temperatures suggest there has been a long-term warming trend, at least up into the early 20th Century. Ignoring this (whatever its cause) will lead to inflated estimates of ECS.
- I still believe that some portion of the land temperature datasets has been contaminated by long-term increases in Urban Heat Island effects, which are indistinguishable from climatic warming in homogenization schemes.
Thank you! A great read. Now, if you could just get the UK Met Office to read it……
I have the greatest respect for Dr. Roy Spencer. I read this yesterday from his blog. I chuckled at this:
“(Yes, I know some of you don’t like the forcing-feedback paradigm of climate change. Feel free to ignore this post if it bothers you.)”
The post doesn’t bother me at all, but yes, the forcing-feedback paradigm puts too much emphasis on the static concept of the poorly named “greenhouse effect” in my view. Better to begin from the observation that the atmosphere is the compressible working fluid of its own heat engine operation.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/16/wuwt-contest-runner-up-professional-nasa-knew-better-nasa_knew/
#NASA_Knew
And to see in near-real-time how important it is to step back from the forcing-feedback paradigm, one can “watch” from space in what NOAA calls the “CO2 Band” of infrared wavelengths. It does not end up looking like the output of a passive radiative absorbing and emitting layer. It is a huge array of highly variable emitter elements, having a lot to do with the formation and dissipation of clouds from all the motion. The end result, in my view, does not support the conceptualization of the issue of non-condensing GHGs as one of “forcing” and “feedback.” It’s not a “trap” but a highly self-regulating dynamic system.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G16&band=16&length=12
(The link activates a 2-hour animation of the “full disk” visualization of the planet from the GOES East geostationary satellite. You can select a longer animation if desired. For the visualization, the “brightness temperature” color scale is such that the radiance at 30C – bright yellow – is 10 times the radiance at -90C -white.)
Regular readers at WUWT have probably seen this before. Thanks for your patience as this was a good opportunity to share these points again.
It is important that scientific concepts are continually reinforced so consensus science is always challenged. Religious beliefs need to be challenged.
Fully agree.
If we really really understood the climate system well, we might find a very simple equation that is an acceptable approximation.
Forcing/(positive)feedback is a concept that is tailor made to produce runaway global warming. It produces the “right” result for the alarmists and that, as far as I can tell, is its only justification.
Monckton’s technique is to accept the concept for sake of argument. He then goes on to show that Hansen did the math wrong.
If we accept forcing/feedback for a moment and rigorously apply it, as Spencer has done, we get an un-alarming temperature rise of two degrees if we double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
As far as I can tell, if we burn all the fossil fuels currently available, we won’t double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Agreed. Some commenters elsewhere here seem to think Spencer supports all the assumptions he uses. Not so. As you say, he is performing an exercise, the end result of which is no cause for alarm.
Very cool image. The Atacama desert in Chili is radiating at 60 °C.
That was one of the first areas that caught my attention last year when I first started watching.
Anything that makes ground level warmer, including CO2, causes more evaporation, thus more low level clouds, and higher reflection of sunlight back into outer space….with the result that radiation balance moves back and forth along the “zero” line on the following Fig 3.2 from Hartmann’s great textbook “Global Physical Climatology”. The lines are radiative watts/m^2. Negative is cooling.
Consequently calculations of ECS that do not include cloud generation will be on the high side. Including the present article by Dr. Roy that can be assumed to include historical cloud albedo.
Anything that doesn’t include all factors, ie cloud generation, will be completely wrong.
Nobody knows all the factors, think Rumsfeld…
Not necessarily correct. People forget that temperature is a second-order factor in evaporation. Wind speed and air humidity are far more important. As global wind speed has been changing over the past decades, you cannot predict cloud cover changes from temperature changes.
To see how wind speed and evaporation have been changing since 1960, see:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/23/the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-vii-a-summary-and-some-questions/
The data shows evaporation follows ocean wind speed, not land wind speed. Cloud cover over oceans and land might present opposite trends.
Climate is anything but simple.
I’m not interested in anything on such small time scales. I want to see the whole Holocene. But all we have for that are proxies, which are really poxies, not really very useful/
No climate model can replicate the attached chart. When they can, they will be useful and I can guarantee that they will not incorporate CO2 or methane or dust. Just sunlight, ice, rain and snow.
Ice on land, on water and in the atmosphere are the only factor you need to understand to determine Earth’s energy balance. Then you have to work out the response times and that is complicated. Ocean take hundreds to thousands of years to move heat in resp[onse to surface energy changes:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24648-x/figures/2
Why are winters getting warmer and yet there is more snow on land? Nothing to do with CO2.
And, similarly, I would expect that wind speed and local partial pressure would be important in the rate of CO2 out-gassing and absorption. Any transient equilibrium at the surface of the oceans with the atmosphere will be affected by wave action as well. Yes, climate is anything but simple.
“Climate is anything but simple.” True Javier, and one can’t give much detail, such as advection causing clouds many km. away 2 days later, in a blog comment….
BTW, I quite like your book “Climate of the Past, Present, and Future”, only $2.99 on Kindle via Amaz…
Low cloud cover is inversely related to see surface temperature, apart from over the central tropics and the Arctic Ocean. With the warm AMO since 1995 there has been a decline in low cloud cover, but also an increase in wind speeds over the oceans, and an increase in lower-mid troposphere specific humidity.
‘Anything that makes ground level warmer, including CO2, causes more evaporation’,
You did not get it. There is no accumulation of more CO2 below 1km like with water vapor. I repeated it twice, here
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/12/15/an-evaluation-of-the-greenhouse-effect-by-carbon-dioxide/
But there is 400 ppm CO2 at top of troposphere, 11 km up and -58 C, and water is only about 5 ppm, so if you increase the CO2 to 500 ppm over the next century, its going to change IR absorption in troposphere and surface temperature, approximately to the extent one can calculate with Modtran, about .3 degrees, which is unnoticeable.
Sorry. There is no mass. The net effect of more CO2 is cooling rather than warming because of the back radiation by CO2 of SW to space. Read my essay on that and do the calculations. It is not so difficult.
Modtran is based on the formulae for doubling of CO2 which were based on the belief that the correlation between CO2 and warming is causal. More CO2 does not cause warming except maybe through the extra greening which changes earth’s albedo. More CO2 is a result of warming rather than a cause of warming.
The rate of radiation from a volume (even a radiative gas) depends on its apparent surface area as viewed by the sensor, not its mass. If there isn’t much mass inside the volume, it just changes whether it cools or heats more quickly. Right, it’s not so difficult but you have to do it right.
And Modtran is based on absorption spectrums of gases as tested, integrates over the atmospheric column to whatever altitude you would like, either up or down-looking…so you can tell whether upper, mid, or lower troposphere warms or cools with increasing CO2.
Show me a report that proves that more CO2 causes warming rather cooling and where the back radiation of SW has been balanced with that of LW that was blocked as I have done in my report.
Merely writing a report does not create truth.
Gradients are important. Pure radiative analysis just doesn’t take mass into account, as it is based only on temperature. Yet temperature changes based on mass. Gradients are almost never linear, just like diffusion. Averages are seldom applicable to variables like insolation either.
Typical Pool claptrap
More CO2 in the atmosphere can be the RESULT of warmer oceans, from any cause.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere will impede Earth’s ability to cool itself, therefore the surface will remain warmer than it would have been if there had been less CO2 in the atmosphere
That is real climate science
You offer only claptrap science.
Yes, more DWIR radiation will enhance the hydrological cycle which is a cooling mechanism for Earth. One of the side effects is a reduction of high altitude water vapor and hence the greenhouse effect of water vapor which partially cancels some of the potential warming.
Also need to factor in the fact that most of that IR that produces this warming came from less than 10 meters into the atmosphere. While it may warm the surface, it also cools this layer of the atmosphere. Nature doesn’t like this kind of energy imbalance and will work hard to conduct much of the energy right back into the lower 10 meters. The overall effect mostly disappears except for the evaporation.
All Roy is doing is charting a short term natural warming trend due to the sun and the oceans and calculating a meaningless number. I’m really not sure how useful these kinds of activities are given they are ignored by alarmists and the media.
Ja. Ja.
As I was saying: There is no warming by the addition of more CO2.
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/12/15/an-evaluation-of-the-greenhouse-effect-by-carbon-dioxide/
You are most welcome to challenge my results.
Bringing in the borehole temperatures proves my point that the heat is coming from somewhere else….
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/08/02/global-warming-how-and-where/
It really doesn’t matter what the borehole temperatures are. The amount of heat coming out of the earth is tiny. It doesn’t even reach the level of rounding error in heat flow calculations.
I did not bring in the borehole T. Roy did. Obviously he feels it could be significant. As do I.
He brought it in as a record of past atmospheric temperature changes.
The fact that boreholes can be used this way proves that the amount of heat coming from the earth itself is miniscule.
MarkW
You are not reading what Roy is saying:
Now, if the warming by CO2 is negative, as shown in my calculations,
i.o.w it causes cooling,
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/12/15/an-evaluation-of-the-greenhouse-effect-by-carbon-dioxide/
and the current warming was also not by the sun,
since energy from the sun, on average, is going down since 1995 or 1996, see picture 5
It is the earth itself, stupid!? | Bread on the water
it follows that the current warming comes from earth itself.
There is no other way?
” the current warming comes from earth itself.”
Complete nonsense
There is no evidence that statement is true.
If you say it 100 times, and you have.
That would make you wrong 100 times.
“Climate Sensitivity from 1970-2021”
Well, that’s not difficult. The 60s and 70s were not what you might call all that warm. No, they were cold. Even the winters of 78 and 79 were cold, snowy affairs. But then, we just got on with life, no crisis, just weather. Even Stephen Schneider was a coldist before he was a warmist.
The early to mid 80s weren’t any different. The real heat was generated by Nasa loony, James Hansen in the late 80s.
If global warming really were such a big thing Britons etc would not be priding themselves on icy cold swimming in the sea. Today.
We know each and every one of those assumptions is wrong. The global warming scare is maintained on false assumptions. The question is why should we care about any value of ECS? It is not only meaningless, but nobody has demonstrated that even the concept of ECS is correct. In a dynamic climate system with lots of variable feedbacks there is no reason to think that a doubling of CO2 will produce the same amount of warming as the previous or next doubling. To compound the ECS problem, it might take centuries to realize the warming, during which, obviously, the Earth will be warming or cooling for a variety of reasons.
I’ve always been puzzled by ECS studies from skeptical scientists. Why would any skeptical scientist want to study something they know is a meaningless concept? It is a complete waste of time. In addition, affirmationists always ignore low-ECS studies.
I have felt for a long time that the Climate Sensitivity isn’t a constant, but varies depending on the CO2 doubling step, absolute humidity, and other factors.
It is so close to zero that making it zero is a good width or six order approximation. It can only alter the surface temperature by its contribution to atmospheric mass and the buoyancy of water vapour.
Northern Hemisphere summers have accelerating solar intensity. It bottomed about 1000 years ago but has been steadily rising. Now up 1W/m^2 and heading for next peak in 9,000 years. The SH has been doing the opposite just a bit later.
Look at how the surface temperature is changing:
global_gis_2021.jpg
CO2 would need to be highly selective in how it heats, cools and leaves alone if it was the cause of observed climate change. The solar intensity across the globe is always changing. There can NEVER be an energy balance. Using that as a starting assumption is where the error lies. A far better assumption is take ECS as zero. Anything but zero requires a massive leap of faith.
“A far better assumption is take ECS as zero.”
The right answer is no one knows ECS and everyone guesses.
Therefore, your “zero” is no better than 198 other guesses.
Javier.
Good comment. I am sad that so few people actually seem to get what you are saying. It is just like what the Bible says….Hosea 4: 6
The reason why it is not at all meaningless is that a 2.09 degrees Celsius rise is PERFECTLY HARMLESS and indeed beneficial.
Dr Roy was explicit about this being an upper limit.
The point is that either ECS is meaningless OR even accepting all the assumptions “on faith” as he put it, there is no climate emergency. Either way, no cause for alarm, no justification for destroying Western civilization.
Let’s assume for purposes of argument that Dr. Spencer’s foundational assumptions are true and that the ECS from a doubling of CO2 concentration is roughly +2C.
Suppose that natural processes are capable of independently producing a +1C rise in global mean temperature between the years 1850 and 2100 regardless of CO2 concentration.
Suppose further that CO2 concentration doubles between 1850 and the year 2100 and thus produces +2C of warming according to Dr. Spencer’s ECS estimate.
Under this particular scenario, could we then be justified in predicting a total increase in global mean temperature of roughly +3C by the year 2100 over 1850 pre-industrial?
Why or why not?
No. The CO2 is a red herring. There is no warming due to more CO2.
The big problem with these ECS calculations is that they assume that all warming is due to CO2.
To believe that, you have to believe that whatever caused the planet to warm up out of the Little Ice Age, stopped in 1970.
Exactly right.
At least two times in the recent past we have seen similar warming to the 1970-2021 period, with highpoints in the 1880’s and the 1930’s. CO2 does not explain those temperature increases. Something else caused those temperature increases. That something else is no doubt still operating and there is no reason to believe it is CO2, when we have examples in the recent past where CO2 was not involved.
Perhaps Sun? E.g from 2008 Total Solar Irradiance is up some 2W/m^2. https://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/
No, it is not the sun. See my comment to Mark higher up the thread.
The shape of the global average temperature estimate is the net result of many climate change variables. It can not reveal the exact effect of CO2, which is just one climate change variable.
The much bigger problem with ECS wild guesses (not calculations) is that the consensus scientists and politicians want to scare people about manmade CO.
So their consensus ECS will always be high.
Pushed even higher with an unreasonably fast RCP CO2 growth rate scenario.
Concerning 1970:
It is a well know scientific fact that all natural causes of climate change, already 4.5 billion years old, died in 1975. However, just before dying they made CO2 the new boss. This was in all the newspapers. 4.5 billion years is really old, while manmade CO2 is just a young spring chicken, so what would you expect?
Yes and no. It’s complicated. To a first approximation it would not be egregiously wrong to say that 1 C of non-CO2 warming combined with 2 C of CO2 warming to yield 3 C of total warming. The problem is that each of those warming components factors in feedbacks. It is common for the ECS to be constrained to a 100-200 year duration only. As such it is more precisely called the fast feedback ECS. The slow feedback ECS includes processes that play out over multi-centennial or longer time scales like would be the case ice sheets or other long duration processes. Anyway, the point is that the 1 C and 2 C ECS figures are presented in isolation. In other words, it is 1 C or 2 C if and only if no other force were applied to the climate system. If you combine the two you would have to adjust the 1 C component by whatever feedback amount the 2 C component caused. Likewise you would need to adjust the 2 C component by whatever feedback amount the 1 C component caused. For sake of making the point let’s say the feedback multiplier is 1.1x for 1 C of warming and 1.2 C for 2 C of augmented warming. That would make the total warming 1.2*1 C + 1.1*2 C = 3.4 C. In reality the feedback relationships are a lot more complicated than just simple multipliers. I’m not even suggesting in this post that the multipliers are even > 1 assuming it could even be modeled that way. I’m only trying to make the point that a 1 C component and 2 C component may not necessarily combine trivially to yield 1 C + 2 C = 3 C of total warming. But it’s probably not a bad first guess.
If the power being combined is random in nature then it should be added in quadrature and not just directly summed. So the combination of things with a proportion of 1:2 you would get 2.2 and not 3.
Let me get this straight…you think that doing arithmetic on temperatures is useless and meaningless while simultaneously believing that 1 C + 2 C = 2.2 C?
*You* are the one adding temperatures as a proxy for power (watts). I’m just pointing out that if you are using temp as a proxy for power then you *must* add in quadrature. That’s just how its done in the real world.
As usual, you just want to ignore the real world.
Maybe I miss your point. Observationally it would go up 2.09C if the only factor in effect were warming due to CO2 increase.
If the reality was that 1 degree of the observed rise was due to unidentified natural warming factors, then it also means that it only increased 1.09C due to ECS of a CO2 doubling. Add them together to get the observed rise.
Now you could argue without any basis in fact that rather than natural warming factors there have been natural cooling factors in play which have counteracted what would have been the greater-than-observed warming. In such a case, ECS might be say, 3 but observed warming only 2 because of a 1C natural cooling being opposed by CO2 warming.
That demonstrates the fundamental limitations of any such analysis. If you don’t have any idea what natural changes are occurring, you can’t really calculate anything. Just to be absurd, say that ECS is really on the far end of alarmist estimates around 7. We observe 2.09. We can’t disprove that the 7 degree rise is only going unobserved because of a 4.91 degree natural cooling. We can most likely provide arguments why natural cooling isn’t happening in such an extreme way, but until we identify and quantify all the factors, we don’t really know anything.
The only benefit of the exercise is to observe that if we accept the premises of mainstream Climastrology, the observed warming is net beneficial.
Why? That can never happen on Earth. The orbit is always shifting the solar intensity and the thermal response of different surfaces covers a huge range as well as incredibly long thermal lags within the oceans and within ice stored on land. The surface temperature of the big ice blocks on the planet are hard to get above 0C.
Some ocean water has not been exposed to the surface for more than a thousand years. In some cases, approaching 2000 years.
No long term climate predictions are justified.
We have a century of wrong long term temperature predictions
What climate science needs are fewer predictions and more understanding of perhaps the top ten climate change variables.
Until you can explain how so many stations show no warming with an increase in CO2, all these sensitivity studies are suspect. You have to control for the Urban Heat Island Effect and Water Vapor, or else the results are corrupted. This took me two seconds to find.
Link
As I said. The indirect warming due to local warming from earth/ change of watering by man/ & more CO2 causes more greening which changes earth’s albedo. John Christy figured that a long time ago. But it seems he forgot.
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/01/10/global-warming-due-to-ehhh-global-greening/
“Suspect” is a kind way of saying what it really is – nothing short of utter BS.
It is dumbfounding how this silly idea has gained so much traction.
Perhaps this is considered in the diagrams above, but we know there is a heat flow outwards from the interior of the earth largely from radioactive decay. This is generally thought by climate folk to be too small to effect what is going on with temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans.
Certainly, considerable extra heat is evolved by friction in subduction zones where oceanic crust is overridden by continental crust (the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ahFPBkQ649M/UqnWkqGIQgI/AAAAAAAAWtE/YMhiiB3_UmA/s1600/subduction_zones_global_map.jpg
Is this CO2 doubling 560 or over 800? Either way it’s a long way off.
This is how real science is done – with analysis of observed data, not projections from computer models.
Dr. Spencer is using a model. He talks about it in his post. And given the fact that there is over 500 months and “thousands of combinations of heat transfer coefficients” examined resulting in at least 500,000 steps in the model (and likely millions of calculations) it is probably safe to assume that he did it with aid of a computer.
And his model has nothing in common with the physical reality out there. It’s not science.
The law of conservation of energy and heat transfer are consistent with physical reality. It’s even one of the cornerstones of science. This is true whether some people accept it or not.
Is the claimed deep-ocean warming a result of vertical conduction from the surface, or lateral movement of deep-ocean currents from a warming Arctic?
Neither of your options. The only way that deep ocean temperature can increase in decades is through reduced net evaporation. And that is occurring. There is a downward trend in water runoff to the oceans as a result of reduced water transfer from oceans..
The shallower MOC layers take hundreds of years to circulate and the abyssal circulations more than 1000 years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24648-x/figures/2
I’m a little surprised at the similarity of the global average land and global average oceans ECSs being so similar considering the large difference in specific heat capacity between water and terrestrial materials.
“As a reminder, all temperature change in an object or system is due to an imbalance between rates of energy gained and energy lost, and the global warming hypothesis begins with the assumption that the climate system is naturally in a state of energy balance.”
_______________________________
Trenberth’s original Energy Budget diagram didn’t show an imbalance. He changed it several years later to show a 0.9w/m² imbalance. Makes you wonder how such a prominent climate scientist could miss such an important concept.
Keihl and Trenberth 1997 did not miss the concept. It is discussed in their publication. However, as they note in their publication the intent is not to provide an estimate of the current imbalance, but to estimate the global mean energy budget as if it were in a long term equilibrium state. They did this by adjusting the surface sensible heat flux to force the imbalance to zero in the chart despite the ERBE suggesting it could be as high as 3 W/m2. The imbalance is more precisely estimated in other publications like Trenberth et al. 2009. I should also point out that the energy budget model was first developed by Dines in 1917. He discussed the relationship between the temperature of the planet and the radiation imbalance. Keihl and Trenberth cite Dines and a bunch of other research all of which make it abundantly clear that the authors know about the relationship between temperature and the radiation imbalance.
Keihl and Trenberth 1997 did not miss the concept. It is discussed in their publication. However, as they note in their publication the intent is not to provide an estimate of the current imbalance, but to estimate the global mean energy budget as if it were in a long term equilibrium state.
_______________________________________________________
So why did he update his chart?
The average effective full spectrum radiating surface of the earth, as observed from space, is the land/ocean/ice surface + atmospheric solid and liquid surfaces.
The upward radiation from the land/ocean is about 382 W m-2 based on blackbody flux global average temperature 286.5K or so (288K at sea level).
286.5K = 382 W m-2 flux
Textbook effective skin temperature of earth given by
https://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/geol212/lectures/19.html
279K = 343.3 W m-2 flux = approximate solar input 1367/4 = 341.75. Not bad. Round to 340 Wm-2 flux accounting for emissivity.
Sea level greenhouse effect = 288K – 279K
Global average greenhouse effect = 286.5K – 279K
*** Effective flux from atmosphere (atmospheric ice and liquid surfaces) = 0C or 273K = 315 W m-2. ***
Global equilibrium atmospheric liquid and solid surface fraction (cloud) = (382-340)/(382-315) = 0.63.
Global clear sky fraction 1-(0.63) = 0.37
Global effective albedo = 1-0.37(382)/0.63(315) = 0.29
Atmospheric flux to space 0.63 (315 W m-2) = 198 W m-2
Surface flux to space 0.37(382)-(0.29(340)) = 43
Reflected to space = 1367/4 x 0.29 = 99 W m-2
OLR = 198 + 43 = 241 W m-2
Atmospheric balance = 241 + 99 = 340 W m-2
*** This is an ‘assumption’ based on frequent phase changes of water occurring in the atmosphere. It is physically valid, and confirmed in the observed spectra as peak emission frequency of Earth.
Checking ad-hoc using environmental lapse rate 6.5K/km in a standard atmosphere results in 288K – 279K/6.5K/km = 1.4km bulk average effective emission altitude.
Globally averaged 286.5 – 279K/6.5K/km = 1.2km.
Atmospheric effective emission altitude = 1.4km / 0.63 = 2.2km (2km above global average surface). This is the altitude at which bulk condensation is occurring. This may include ‘invisible’ liquid and solid phase full spectrum emitting matter in addition to common cloud.
Extending from surface upward ~2km x -6.5K/km = -13K + 286.5K = 273.5K atmospheric bulk emission temperature. Pretty close to within 0.5K.
This peak atmospheric frequency is confirmed in standard atmospheric emission spectra.
Why start with a silly assumption?
Why not take a look at history and see how climate has changed in the past. Interglacials terminated in similar circumstances to what exists now with the NH exposed to increasing solar intensity every year.
Most warming is occurring in the high northern latitudes in WINTER on land. The northern oceans are warming most in summer. The entire Southern Hemisphere south of 55S is cooling.
Greenland is increasing elevation at 17mm a year. Both Greenland and Iceland are gaining permanent ice extent. The NH snow extent and volume is trending upward.
What causes glaciation?
What would the termination of the modern interglacial look like?
Answer those two questions and you have a good grip on current observed trends. It simply has nothing to do with CO2. CO2 altering Earth’s energy balance is a fairy tale. It surprises me that so many people believe this silly idea.
It takes hundreds to thousands of years for heat to be transported through the oceans. This alone shows how silly the starting assumption is. It is ridiculous to assume Earth was in some magic energy balance in 1850.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24648-x#Fig5
“Greenland is increasing elevation at 17mm a year. Both Greenland and Iceland are gaining permanent ice extent.”
Greenland is losing ice and hence elevation, there is a slight increase in elevation at the highest part of the sheet (Summit, 17mm/yr), however there is significant loss of elevation in the lower lying regions and a net loss overall.
feart-09-674983-g005.jpg
How can it be losing elevation when you agree the summit is increasing at 17mm/yr. The summit is the “highest point”. If the highest point is going up then the island it is gaining elevation. Exactly as I wrote.
And the permanent ice cover is increasing.
The whole of Greenland will have permanent ice again by the end of this century.
The oceans are warming up so the glacier calving has accelerated – to be expected. And of course that lowers the elevation of the ice near the land/ocean interface. There is still net loss of mass but the picture is changing. This year has one of the highest rates of accumulation recorded – dead opposite of what the CO2 demonisers projected:
SMB_curves_LA_EN_20221220.png
Couple of reactions. Interesting ‘new’ approach. Glad to see it being refined after reviewer comments. Good science producing another ‘way below models’ observational ECS estimate.
But, before ARGO OHC was a bit of a guess, so quite uncertain. So limits the ‘accuracy’ of this new approach. Cannot be inferred from SST because of variations in the thermocline, and the old XBT dart sensors had known inadequacies. All the older OHC literature has significant uncertainties.Trenberth’s 2013 paper even purported to find ‘the missing heat’ projected by climate models —but not older observations— ‘below the thermocline’. I ridiculed his paper in essay ‘Missing Heat’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Let’s assume for purposes of argument that per Rick Wills’ opinion, the current interglacial is in fact now in the process of terminating; and that at some point within the next ten to fifteen thousand years — or whenever — the earth will be fully glaciated again.
Unless some major human calamity occurs before the next glaciation is at its height, we would expect that satellites will still be circling the earth measuring various geophysical and atmospheric properties just as they are now; and that we will still be using surface stations, weather balloons, ocean temperature measurement systems, etc. etc. — all with improved sensing technology and better analysis tools.
Can we predict what the earth’s global mean temperature would be at the height of the next glaciation? What would be the expected distribution of temperatures across the earth’s surface? What kinds of values would we expect to see among all the other various physical properties and geophysical data types which are now being employed in today’s radiative balance accounting techniques?
It is not an opinion. It is simply stating the obvious that links all current observations into a coherent perspective that has been repeated four times in the past 500k years. I am doing nothing more than observing the historic record without any prejudice about CO2 being able to influence Earth’s energy balance.
The termination of the modern interglacial is very similar to the one 399k years ago. The NH summer solar intensity is rising modestly. The three others since then have occurred with much higher eccentricity causing much greater precessional swing in hemispherical solar intensity.
Taking the 399k termination as a guide, the first stage will be a drop of 40m in 10,000 years. So the sea level will be dropping at sbout 4mm per year. The land north of 40N will be gaining altitude at 12mm per year. Greenland is increasing at 17mm now but it is higher than average level and has much closer exposure to surrounding water.
None of the land with permanent ice cover will get much warmer than 0C. So summer temperature will be much lower than present. The land holding ice will rise 120m above present level and the oceans drop 40m below present level. So close enough to 200m difference. The lapse rate alone will reduce the average winter land temperature by 2C but there will be some offsetting increase in winter advection from still warm ocean.
I expect most of the North Atlantic south of 40N to be hitting the 30C limit before the snow starts to seriously accumulate – similar to what is observed in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal in April.. That surface heat will work its way into the mid depths through the MOC and keep supplying atmospheric moisture for hundreds of years.
So falling ocean for around 10,000 years then levelling off for 12,000 years then another fall for 10,000 years, then another levelling off then another fall before the glacier calving is sufficient to cool the northern ocean surface and slow the winter water cycle sufficiently to allow melt to overtake fall. That is a true tipping point because once ocean water laps the glaciers, the process accelerates as the sea level rises and inundates more glaciers.
So a better question – If you have never been fed the fairy tale about CO2 and I showed you the attached chart you would simply ask – when do you expect to see sea levels falling again? My response to that is at least a couple of hundred years. By 2200 the snowfall will only increase by 50%. It has to go up much higher to get snow accumulating as far south as 40N.
The only places currently gaining permanent ice extent Greenland and Iceland. These land masses are isolated from other land masses and do not get the warming summer breeze off land that other northern regions experience. The permafrost line on larger land masses is still retreating. Once it begins advancing, it will be obvious that the scales have tipped back in favour of accumulation. After that, the sea level will fall but the northern oceans will get a lot warmer so they will expand for a while yet.
I suggest that you write a WUWT article on this topic and include a time line illustrating the major geophysical events which will occur along the pathway towards reglaciation.
The docx version of the linked file was sent to Charles a week ago:
Heat_Ice_Stores.pdf
So far no response.
As long as people are looking at the obvious and beginning to appreciate how they have been conned by nonsense about CO2 altering Earth’s anergy balance then I am at least doing my bit.
I now suggest that you place a comment at the end of this article requesting an online peer review of your paper from the WUWT readership.
After the readership is done with making their comments, revise your paper as you see necessary and then resubmit it to Charles. He will either accept it or he won’t.
If he doesn’t accept the revised paper as the basis for an article, then just post a link to the updated paper and call it good.
If you believe the climate alarmists, the CGM’s, and the radiation analyzers then the greenhouse effect will never go away. No more glacial periods. Just Earth turning into a cinder as temperatures go ever higher.
Ask yourself what the CGM’s would show if run for 1000years or 10000 years. If they show no tapering off of the warming after 80-100 years it is doubtful they ever would. No wonder so many climate alarmists thing we are living in the end times.
Yes Tim, that’s their story and they are sticking to it. And they will continue to stick to it regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Within the larger ecosystem of the AGW narrative, it is in their job description to do this kind of thing.
My own prediction is for a +2C rise in GMT over 1850 pre-industrial by the end of the century, roughly another 1C rise above today’s GMT. The basis assumption is that the pattern of ups and downs seen in GMT over the last 170 years will repeat itself over the next eighty years. (In other words, when in doubt, predict that current trends will continue. That’s my own story, and I’m sticking to it.)
At any rate, it doesn’t matter what the mainstream climate science community is saying about where GMT will be going in the next hundred years. Anti-carbon energy policies are firmly embedded in the larger economic policies of most western nations and will remain so long into the future.
Yes, I am pessimistic. These anti-carbon energy policies will not be abandoned regardless of what manner and extent of economic train wreck befalls the nations which are now pursuing Net Zero. It is what it is.
Please explain how, in Fig 3, deep sea ocean temperature was measured from 1940-1990.
Or was it modeled from assumptions… which of course make the whole essay irrelevant.
From the article: “In addition to the assumption that the radiative forcing scenarios are a relatively accurate representation of what has been causing climate change since 1765,”
Your radiative forcing looks like a Hockey Stick to me.
Roy, it appears that you think the Hockey Stick charts of the world pre-1978, represent reality. Why?
If Hockey Sticks don’t represent reality, what does that do to your calculations?
Hockey Stick charts show the 1930’s as being much cooler than the present day, whereas the regional U.S. chart shows the 1930’s to be just as warm as today, So what’s your calculation if there is just as much warmth in the 1930’s as there is today, but with much less CO2 in the air in the 1930’s. Not much forcing there looking at it that way.
The chart in question is showing the amount of radiation forcing, it is not showing anything to do with temperature.
All the chart says is that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increased slowly from 1850 till 1970, and rose more rapidly after that. Which is something we already knew.
It still looks like a Hockey Stick. I didn’t say it was showing temperature.
Btw, that’s not my downvote. I don’t do downvotes.
That’s not science.
While I have not personally measured temperatures down drill holes, I have seen hundreds of holes drilled. With rock drilling using a diamond bit for core recovery, there has to be a flow of pumped cooling water to remove the heat from the friction of cutting rock. With non-diamond bits, there is (probably) always a flow of water or drilling mud to cool, to balance pressures and to lubricate during drilling. (Ice drilling has different conditions).
Core that has been stored for a few years, presumably, goes to the temperature of its surroundings. I speculate that stored core does not seem to retain a heat signature from olden days. Why then, is it assumed that the walls of the hole, adjacent to where the core was extracted, do not also reach a local temperature after years of sitting there, usually in contact with flowing water? (A long term flow of water might tend to homogenize the borehole temperatures, but how long is long?). For these and other reasons, I have once studied then evermore disregarded borehole temperature reconstructions to measure climate factors like past temperature.
Please tell me that there is proof that I am wrong. Geoff S.
“(Yes, I know some of you don’t like the forcing-feedback paradigm of climate change. Feel free to ignore this post if it bothers you.)”
Agreed. Done.
For the record, I like and respect Roy Spencer, but…
The world got colder from ~1940 to ~1977. That inconvenient data has been “adjusted” warmer ever since. Using the uncorrupted data, what was the NEGATIVE ECS then?
The hottest period in the USA was the 1930’s. What was the (negative?) ECS measured from the 1930’s to now?
These analyses attribute ALL Temperature change to CO2 – that is just false nonsense.
Atmospheric CO2 changes lag atmospheric temperature changes by ~9 months in the modern data record, and by ~~800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
“Cart before horse” analysis. The future cannot cause the past.
This published approach takes the uber-corrupt warming alarmists’ methods and works them to get an answer – but it’s all false nonsense.
This type of analysis starts with a false assumption and makes no rational sense.
Reminds me of that guy who shot himself in the foot. No, it’s not funny – in either case – it’s just obtuse, costly and dangerous.
Climate skeptics keep muddling around with our little analyses when IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT THE SCIENCE. CAGW is a scam, easily disproved, yet every disproof is ignored because billions of dollars are spent yearly to promote that scary false narrative to people with no scientific education and no understanding of the scientific method. It’s wolves stampeding the sheep.
While skeptic scientists stay in their “safe space” running numbers, multitudes will die this winter because politicians have destroyed once-functional energy systems with excessive intermittent wind-and-solar power. That’s what it’s going to take to end this false narrative. It did not have to end in tragedy – all we needed to do was speak the truth, loudly:
We published these facts in 2002 and nothing has changed:
There is no real Catastrophic Human-made Global Warming Crisis.
Green Energy is not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy.
I also wrote in 2002 that natural Global Cooling would start circa 2020.
In 2013 I wrote an Open Letter to the British Undersecretary of Energy and Climate, predicting that within ten years the Brits will have brewed the perfect storm – lack of dispatchable energy in a cooling world. Precisely where we are, ten years later in Britain, Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Let the Cull of the Elderly and Poor begin. It’s too late to stop it now.
Regrets, Allan
True.
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/12/15/an-evaluation-of-the-greenhouse-effect-by-carbon-dioxide/
Yes thank you Henry – precisely!