It's been a bad week for Believers

Many here are aware of the idea that ice melt rates differ in different locations. A short quote from the Hattermann paper:

"This suggests rather low basal melt rates, consistent with remote sensing based, steady state mass balance estimates in this sector of the Antarctic coast. "

In the place they looked, Fimbul Ice Shelf, others had reported low (or absent) melt rates. As was found here again. By no means, miss the words consistent with OK?

Again, a headline writer redefines the study, and a causual reader (from our very own) takes it further and consistent with becomes consensus overturned. Ouch

But let us not make too much of that. It is readily corrected. Instead, let me slip you an insider tip. All journal manuscripts spend some time in review. In this case, we can see from the free-access front page (bottom) that time was 2 months. Every journal has some average time for this, and 2 months is very short almost everywhere including Geophysical Research Letters.

To achieve this, the manuscript as first submitted must be both well-written and free of major controversy.

Towards the other extreme, there are many factors that can lead a manuscrupt to spend "a long time in the oven". They don't pertain here so we can leave that for another day.

Now I have given you special powers on how to peek behind the scenes in the scientific literature. Pray, use them wisely.

 

Arrhenius was an incredibly gifted chemist who deserves to be recognized as such, even if he had never considered infrared absorption by CO2 and water vapor.

If you read his bio (even the mini version on Wikipedia) you wlll see that he was ... not the world's nicest person though.

Funny, that. Does it come with the territory? Isaac Newton was a total whackjob and at the same time, the possessor of one of the biggest brains that ever squeezed into a human skull.

 

More for the 'good news' file; might as well put it here

"Atmospheric CO2 forces abrupt vegetation shifts locally, but not globally"
Higgins and Scheiter, in press at Nature.

They ran a model and found out that CO2 fertilization of savannahs in Africa would cause them to grow into forests instead. This would mean carbon sequestration, and act to slow atmospheric CO2 increases. So this is just what you'd find at Idso's CO2 Science website.

In more ways than one. The Higgins and Scheiter model assumes no soil moisture limitations. In constrast the models that (attempt to) project rainfall in Africa show large areas of decrease. So it might not exactly happen.

But for those with the one-dinemsional view that moe CO2 will always increase plant growth (and that they will always be the plants that you like), this one's for you. And Nature is no shabby journal either. So, a note of happiness.

 

There is a bigger difference in IQ between high level geniuses such as Newton and the average person that there is between an average person and a chimpanzee. I suspect that contributes to the problems some of the high level geniuses have.

 

As always, it's good to check what the scientific consensus was. Here's the 2007 IPCC report (AR4), discussion of what was known at that time. Note " ... small number of measurements ... lack of agreement ... no implication that the midpoint ... falls between ice sheet growth of 100 Gt yr–1 and shrinkage of 200 Gt yr–1"

Maybe things shifted substantially in the period since then, but that's the state of knowledge as of the last formal summary of what is known about climate change.

"Assessment of the data and techniques suggests overall Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance ranging from growth of 50 Gt yr–1 to shrinkage of 200 Gt yr–1 from 1993 to 2003. As in the case of Greenland, the small number of measurements, lack of agreement between techniques, and existence of systematic errors that cannot be estimated accurately preclude formal error analyses and confidence limits. There is no implication that the midpoint of the range given provides the best estimate. Lack of older data complicates a similar estimate for the period 1961 to 2003. Acceleration of mass loss is likely to have occurred, but not so dramatically as in Greenland. Considering the lack of estimated strong trends in accumulation rate, assessment of the possible acceleration and the slow time scales affecting central regions of the ice sheets, it is reasonable to estimate that the behaviour from 1961 to 2003 falls between ice sheet growth of 100 Gt yr–1 and shrinkage of 200 Gt yr–1."

As for what the models project, again, worth seeing what the IPCC said back in 2007:

"Current global model studies project that the Antarctic Ice Sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall. However, net loss of ice mass could occur if dynamical ice discharge dominates the ice sheet mass balance. {10.7}

Again, not a lot of certainty there. But the notion that you'd expect growth in Antarctic land ice mass is not exactly a new idea.

Read it for yourself:
4.6.2.2 Measured Balance of the Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves - AR4 WGI Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground
Projections of Future Changes in Climate - AR4 WGI Summary for Policymakers

My final comment is that a lot of people really don't grasp the differing implications of 1) the roughly 50% loss of the (very thin) ocean surface ice area at the arctic ocean minimum, compared to 30 years ago, and 2) the small gains and losses in the (very thick) land ice in the antarctic. It's apples and oranges. 1) is immediately important for albedo feedback, northern hemisphere weather, and in what may be the too-near term, methane release. 2) is important for making sense of sea level change, at least in the short run. I think the only reason this is getting a lot of play among the denialists now is in trying to set up a straw man/false sense of equivalence, is in an attempt to distract from the loss of arctic ocean surface ice.

In short, based on the 2007 IPCC report"
There was no strong evidence for mass gain or loss from Antarctica, as of 2007.
The long-run projection of the models at that time was mass gain from increased precipitation.

My take on the arctic melt is that we'd better hope the arctic losses have some large transient (periodic, quasi-period) component to them, i.e. that the icecap returns largely toward more normal coverage in the near future. If we can get permanent changes at that rate of speed, any reasoned assessment of climate change risks has to shift upward substantially. What else can change that much faster than predicted?

EDIT: In retrospect, maybe people don't have the facts in hand to put the numbers in perspective -- to understand why it's tough to say much one way or the other, about the Antarctic. My recollection is that the accumulation or ice loss is small relative to the overall mass of the sheet.

Say we're talking about mass increase of 100 GT (gigatons) of ice. What is that, percentage-wise? As a fraction of the ice in Antarctica?

Well, the volume of the Antarctic ice sheet is 30 million cubic kilometers of ice.
Quick Facts on Ice Sheets

A cubic kilometer of water is just about exactly a gigaton of water.
Cubic kilometers to tons (water) - conversion calculator and table / chart

(It's a strange world where there's an on-line conversion for that, but there it is.)

So if that were water, that would be 30 million gigatons of water. But it's ice, so it's about 28 million gigatons of ice.

So the 100 gigatons/28 million gigatons = is 100/28,000,000 = 0.0004%. Did I slip a decimal somewhere? I recalled that it was tiny, I didn't recall it was quite that tiny.

Compare to 50% reduction in summer minimum ice cover in the arctic ocean. Apples and oranges.

 

I was all set to talk about Antarctica in terms of perimeter melting and inland snowfall increase both resulting from warmer surface-sea waters. But the Zwally abstract linked at WUWT already did it and better.

Antarctica is a very large, varied place. Different water-balance things are happening in different places, and to resolve the picture better than that (terribly) broad statement, please go to the published papers themselves. If the entire continent is net balance positive that would be great. But the progression of studies published on the large ice sheets seem to recently be going back and forth with recent technological advances. This kinda looks like contradiction, but I am inclined to view it as refinement of rather complex situations.

Another example, Himalaya/Hindu Kush looked strong negative by the first GRACE, near-neutral by the second GRACE, and net melting (slowly) by a third more recent study.

Viewed as incremental approaches towards understanding, such studies seem very typical of science in general. If one takes the contrary view that each different result debunks all those previous, then I have to say you've put yourself in a difficult position. For there will be an N+1 study, and if it disagrees with the one you identified as the pure and whole truth, then you are debunked along with study N.

Nobody needs that pain in life. Incremental approaches towards understanding. In other words, there are no bad weeks for followers of the scientific method. Maybe I said that upthread. Can't recall.

 

In and of itself, this is true. More CO2, all things being equal, will increase plant growth. More CO2 means less of a plants energy must be used to create stoma, which means less water is lost to respiration - more drought resistance and more growth.

More ghg, leading to changes in precipitation and temperature may be positive or negative to plant growth. These are complex. The huge factor here is man. Which plants are planted, killed, irrigated make a huge difference. Nature left on its own would likely be neutral on these factors, but as was shown in the dust bowl or china's great leap forward, man often intervienes to produce less plant growth because of agriculture policies. The green revolution was one that man had positive effects on plant growth.

 

That's good advice for life.

 

Thanks Amped, for linking to the "released today" story from 2012 October 13. But no problem for the time slip, it is interesting to follow HADCRUT4 and the other global temperature series.

So let's do:

Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets

The time ticks are 5 years, so it is clear from the graph that each decade is warmer than the previous since 1960. You may remember me saying so before here. I think decadal is an appropriate perspective, as the oceans 'give and take' heat differently from year to year. Much (but not completely) related to ENSO.

If from such data, or infrared-absorption physics, or anything else, we could have realistic expectation that the next decade won't be warmer than this one, that would be great. I mean that most sincerely.

Also in October Mail Online we read
"This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years."

Please look at the graph I linked and decide for yourselves whether my 'decadal' or their 'stable or declining' fits better.

If shorter time intervals are more your interest, then note Mail Online's ending in August 2012. September 2012 was tied (with 2005) for warmest September globally. We read that in many places, right? including the NOAA website. David Rose got in just under the wire on that one!

Also, AustinG @ 128 returns to CO2. Reminds me of a very recent study (link later) that a Green Revolution high-yielding rice variety doesn't much like more CO2. Great yield because it made a short thick stalk and lots of seed. More CO2 unmasks the gibberelin (plant hormone) effect and the stalk goes tall and the yield goes down.

Now that is just one variety of one staple grain, but I hope people are looking at the phenomenon more widely. Crop variety selections for yield never considered how things would do at 395 ppm and movin' on up. We can forgive that oversight, but the 'need to feed' 7 billions (heading for 9 within decades we are told) is not negotiable.

 

Fair enough, I already gave you my bottom line: every decade warmer than the previous. I did download the HADCRUT4 annual data and create decadal averages (just to confirm that my bottom line was based on the data). Sure, I could paste it here, but I think it would be more compelling for Amped to do his own. A learning experience.

You will see that there are 2 dips on a 60-year cycle, bottomed in 1903 and 1963. This has been commented on in the literature. Nobody seems to know what caused them, though some sort of marine heat-storage cycle has been implicated. No actual mechanism though, that I have heard of. Sure would be good to have pre-1850 thermometry, to see if there have been earlier, similar. The BEST reconstruction has them, but in pre-1850 the timing is not quite 60 years, and their error bands get quite wide in the earlier times. Probably you've seen their graphs.

I emphasize this, because (naively) extrapolating forwards, we 'd anticipate another such dip bottoming in 2023. If the 60-year cycle is real, and persists, and is not overwhelmed by increased infrared energy trapping at that time.

That would be welcomed, really, because how much chance is there that we will collectively decide to stop increasing CO2 by then? A brief pause on the upward decadal trends would be great. So, call me naive, but I do cling to the hope that we will get another marine (or whatever) pause.

So, what did you think of that ending the data in 2012 August, just before the record-tying 2012 September? Just a coincidence I guess. That is really my only reason to 'tag' you about it being published today. Today, it would need to include additional warm months which would speak against the conclusions drawn.

 

Is there actually evidence of IR energy trapped in the Troposphere?
It creates a hotspot that radiates back to the Earths surface ?
Im open to be educated.
But are there studies of actual Temp readings, not models?
My understanding is that there is no evidence of any hotspot.
Thus no evidence of CO2 global warming.
Im sure you can dredge up some BS ,but do you really believe it?

 

Did I say collective? Well, yes. I said that I doubt we will collectively decide to reduce greenhouse-gas concentrations in the next decade. You might agree or disagree with my doubt. But if you are interpreting anything more into my words, I don't know what it is and would appreciate some clarification.

I did not comment at all about the UK economy part of David Rose' writing. I really don't feel qualified. I feel quite qualified to take decadal averages of available online data, and did so. It does not matter which T dataset or re-analysis one uses. The decadal increases are still there. Even if Amped prefers not to look, someone else here might, and that'll have to do.

I completely agree that the world has many more concerns that what humans exhale. If you mean those words literally, it is approaching 10% of the Earth's terrestrial net primary production. Quite amazing for a single species! But if there were zero humans exhaling zero CO2, it would (almost) all be eaten by other animals or be decomposed by microbes. in that sense, biology is a zero-sum game.

Or if you mean exhalation more broadly to include fossil-C burning, that is another matter entirely. No other species does that. Except bacteria feeding upon natural crude-oil seeps. So we are unique, very nearly. This fossil-CO2 flux is equal to what all animals of all species everywhere eat. Again, I find it amazing.

All without important consequence? Gets us to the attributions that Mojo wants. I did have a recent paper in mind studying the troposphere warming +stratosphere cooling. That would be the 'hotspot', yes? Can't put my finger on it right now so I ask your patience. In the meantime, there may be some interest in these three:

http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/ghegerl/WIRES.pdf
http://storage.bodekerscientific.com/Hegerl2011.pdf
doi:10.4236/acs.2012.24035

The last one is not easy to link to, but just put the doi into google or google scholar, etc. and it will pop right up.

Mojo added the additional constraint of data only, not models. Everyone else will have noticed that I did so already, right in this thread.

So you have the T data, and you want to attribute it to causes. I really don't know how one would do that w/o models. Judge those models for yourselves. I've said repeatedly that I am not satisfied with the coupled air/sea models, and why (they don't spontaneously make ENSO or the other sloshes). Hoping for improvement, but this what we have now.

I hit a wall in that other thread. Several references related to air humidity trends. I honestly thought that was what Mojo wanted. A test of the Milkowski (sp?) model; the only model Mojo likes

 

Tochatihu, I respect your prodigious expertise and greatly admire your infinite patience. 'Tis far nobler to endure the slings and arrows.

 

My expertise ain't much. I have put in the long hours finding the literature related to terrestrial chemical cycling. It turns out that the same skills can be applied to these other fields.

Most of the literature is written in a 'moderately accessible' style. The WIRES climate reviews (and review articles in general) are more accessible. The climate and radiative-transfer models, are less so. But we do what we can, try to not misinterpret, and always suggest to others that they do their own reading to inform opinions.

A bit of goading (if I may call it that) here has caused me to enter climate literature more deeply. Probably a good thing on balance, but it does take time. But let's remember that this is a chat room, and my responses to individuals are meant for the wider group. Furthermore a chat room about environmental matters, so I presume that people here are interested in relationships between affinity websites and scientific papers.

Climate/carbon/earth-system science has an unusually scintillating relationship with related affinity websites. That's pretty much the whole story.

 

There is another attribution review from 2009

http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/stone_detection_attribution_human_influence.pdf

is your free download spot because this particular journal really wants you to pay to see

Scroll way down two the third panel of Figure 3 to see how the models (spaghetti) correspond with air T trends. Seems to 'do ENSO' even better than Hegerl 2011, goes to show how models can be tuned OTOH first panel of Figure 3 tunes the natural forcings, showing that w/o CO2, you just can't make a century of T trends fit.

Dial up the CO2 some more, and will the next century give 3 oC instead of the previous 0.8 (or 0.9)? That is the question worth asking.

If some of you find this review to be wordy, so did I. But I don't mind at all that they repeatedly say that climate attribution is in its infancy. I think that's spot on.