New climate-related stuff

I resist the urge to append this to Mojo/Evans.

First Vaks et al in Science (paywalled, y'know what to do) looked at speleothems (we might as well say stalactites) in permafrost caves where they cannot form unless it is warm enough for liquid water. This is quite clever. In one cave there were few episodes in the last 5KY, in the other cave there were several. Few means that the locality did not get the memos about Minoan warming, medieval warming, etc. Perhaps the other cave did. There is something for everybody to like here! But in part, it is consistent with the lower-latitude glacial melt history, namely that now is an unusually warm climate during 5KY. Misinterpreting polar glacial ice core isotope records will not lead one to that idea. With apologizes to readers so inconvenienced.

doi: 10.1126/science.1228729

Second, Stott et al in Environmental Research Letters. This one is open access. In brief, they say that mainstream climate models may overestimate the next few-decades warming, and why they think so. Very interesting, and a bit more indication (were that needed) that the "warming team" does not control journal publications. This one gives perhaps a better look at model performance vs. recent T records than Mojo/Evans did, which is why I had to resist the urge to post it yonder. Mojo has warned me not to distract his whack-a-mole threads! So I shall not

doi: ERL/8/014024

By no means do these two represent all the latest/hottest in the climate-research literature, but there is quite a lot to track and I'd be pleased if somebody else here could find the time. What I hope (if not quite expect) is that IPCC AR5 will lower its expectations for CO2-induced warming a bit over the next few decades. They need more cred, and with 'anonymous donor' paying lot$ to dilute that at every stage, they need to pick a path that helps all the rest of us to decide now much (how quickly) to fund a non-fossil-C energy transition.

Or, we could just follow the current C-path and see where that leads. The question is before us.

 

Environ. Res. Lett. 8 (2013) 014024 (8pp) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014024
The upper end of climate model temperature projections is inconsistent with past warming
Peter Stott, Peter Good, Gareth Jones, Nathan Gillett and Ed Hawkins
(should provide the correct location)

"I'm not sure what the IPCC could do to get the Chinese to pick a less carbon intense path." Um, nothing I guess. What can the IPCC do to get anyone to pick?

Meanwhile it has been in the news that CH is moving towards making its local carbon taxes/carbon markets national.​

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If CH (I keep calling China that, even though it correctly refers to Switzerland) institutes a carbon tax before the USA, would that strike anyone here as odd?​

 

New in Science today, another paleo-proxy T study suggesting current global T is higher than most since the most recent -20kya deglaciation. No tree rings were used, in case that matters. For some it may be one among many. For others, perhaps, another 'that doesn't prove anything'.

I am not the adjudicator. Just the scout. We might have fun discussing whether the upward T trend since the Little Ice Age has become significantly faster in the current CO2 push.

DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026

Fun for me because it points to Steinhilber et al 2012 'solar forcing'

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1118965109

Which tells quite a different story from the Zhou and Tung papers I keep pointing y'all to. Somebody will have to sort this out.

 

Yes, fuzzy1's links refer back to Marcott et al paper I mentioned above

DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026

It giave a new (bent) view of the hockey-stick handle, but the blade remained strictly up. Of course this has been discussed at WUWT:

Uh oh, there be grafting in Marcott et al | Watts Up With That?

and I'd not want you to form your own conclusions w/o reading all that stuff. Probably there is more at Curry's climate etc., so please read that also.

But when you are done, the matter before us remains. If the recent instrumental-T record shows nothing unusual compared to the paleo-T-proxies, then we may be in the clear for uncontrolled fossil-C burning. Or, if the new T path is faster, we might wish to reconsider 'burn it all as fast as possible'.

The best fossil-C-burn path for the next few decades is not obvious to me. If it is obvious to you, I guess that you have some certainty, one way or the other.

 

Bumped, for couple of new publications in the 'not so bad news' related to climate change category.

Climate sensitivity may be towards the low end of the 'IPCC AR4' range:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1836.html

Tropical lizards may not be (quickly) driven to extinction by increasing temperatures:
Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards: Study contradicts predictions of widespread extinction

Somebody is intending to launch a microsatellite that will have high resolution for outgoing infrared from the Earth. I've lost the link, but it seems like it would attempt the goals of the ill-fated GLORY mission. Darn useful stuff; I hope it flies.

Anybody see others fitting the category, fell free to add them here. For that matter, add links to any data/model based study indicating that the whole thing is an Imhofe-scale hoax. Those would deserve our attention as well.

But guesses from affinity web sites, or already, debunked stuff? Perhaps other threads would be more suitable for those. Here we might better stick with the hard-core science stuff, with emphasis on 'maybe it won't be so bad, at least for a few decades'.

 

This just in:

Global Warming and Neotropical Rainforests: A Historical Perspective
Carlos Jaramillo and Andr´es C´ardenas
Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2013. 41:741–66

(abstract)
"There is concern over the future of the tropical rainforest (TRF) in the face of global warming. Will TRFs collapse? The fossil record can inform us about that. Our compilation of 5,998 empirical estimates of temperature over the past 120 Ma indicates that tropics have warmed as much as 7◦C during both the mid-Cretaceous and the Paleogene. We analyzed the paleobotanical record of South America during the Paleogene and found that the TRF did not expand toward temperate latitudes during global warm events, even though temperatures were appropriate for doing so, suggesting that solar insolation can be a constraint on the distribution of the tropical biome. Rather, a novel biome, adapted to temperate latitudes with warm winters, developed south of the tropical zone. The TRF did not collapse during past warmings; on the contrary, its diversity increased. The increase in temperature seems to be a major driver in promoting diversity."

A comparable review for the Asian and African tropics hasn't been done yet, but may be even more interesting. In glacial stages, with much lower sea level, SE Asia is like a whole 'nother continent, not separate islands. That is a big deal for plants and animals.

Meanwhile at the ICDC9 (carbon) conference in Beijing, we have heard that rainfall patterns have been much more important than temperature (or CO2) to affect tropical productivity over the last few decades. Which makes us sad that rainfall remains difficult to predict. The 2005 and 2010 droughts caused a lot of tree mortality in Amazonas.

Overall, we may hope that tropical systems that manage to avoid being cut or burned can handle century 21 century temperatures.

 

No time to appreciate a new N=6000 compilation that suggests things might not be all that bad? All righty then.

The Marcott does offer some similarities, in that it compiled a lot of proxy records. Perhaps that is the reason to offer (distract with) it here. Two issues seem to have been raised about that study. First, that proxies (after high-frequency filtering) could have missed rapid temperature spike(s) in the past. Second, that records of different types should never be joined, under any circumstances.

I suppose the way to approach the first is to create synthetic time series, subject them to like filtering, and find out just what size of spike could be rendered completely invisible by the filter. Then we'd know what excursions could have gone undetected, which seems quite useful.

The second objection strikes me as philosophical, and therefore not amenable to analysis or correction. If one simply believes that records from different sources can never be joined, well then the conversation is over. If the can, possibly, be joined, then the topic becomes how to do it in a non-misleading way.

So for me, this would be the way to approach Marcott. Not McKitricks' way, but I guess that's no surprise.

The tragedy here applies both to Marcott and the (undiscussed) Jaramillo and Cardenas. Can massive data-compilation efforts be turned to nothing just by somebody saying so? I certainly hope not. Besides figuring out new things, using previous observations to figure out 'old things' seems like a really useful aspect of science. I'd not allow one voice to render it moot. With or without name calling; it makes no difference.

I suppose it is in the hands of others to decide how many (if any!) of the tools of science should be abandoned on behalf of the 'tools' of an industry. But my preference is not to abandon any. Too many unknowns remain in the earth system, and we have everything at stake.

 

A more meaty treatment is here

Climate science once again finds itself fighting with hockey sticks | Ars Technica

with a link to tamino apparently doing something like the analysis I suggested above. I can't read wordpress sites though.

This raises an interesting parallel. Here I am, in a large Asian country, where there are parts of the internet I am not supposed to know about. The rest of you, there you are, with denier/sceptics/whatever is the most polite term. There are parts of science that they don't want you to know about, or use, or benefit from. With regard to internet filtering here, it is a matter of my own choice and I accept it voluntarily.

I'd urge you not to surrender any aspect of rational inquiry without considering the issue. Do the people who don't want you to know details of previous climates, have your own best interests at heart?

 

Marcott presents yet another example where the data could be re-analyzed by anyone, by any (disclosed) procedures, to determine whether there were temperature excursions that these authors missed. A great opportunity sadly being missed.

 

Any effort to dismiss editors of Science Magazine would probably start at this page:

Science/AAAS | Science Magazine: About the Journal: Staff and Editorial Board

so if that strikes your fancy, step right up. Huffing and puffing at PC won't get it done.