The Earth’s climate depends on the net sunlight deposited on the globe, which is critically sensitive to the Earth’s albedo. A global and absolutely calibrated albedo can be determined by measuring the amount of sunlight reflected from the Earth and, in turn, back to the Earth from the dark portion of the face of the Moon (the `earthshine’ or `ashen light’).
It is a little-known but significant fact that about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by clouds at any given time. But not all clouds are the same; different types of clouds affect the Earth’s climate differently. While some types of clouds help to warm the Earth, others help to cool it.
Currently, all of the Earth’s clouds together exert a net cooling effect on our planet. But the large and opposing influences of clouds on the Earth’s climate begs the question: What will be the net effect of all of the Earth’s clouds on climate as the Earth continues to warm in the future? Will clouds accelerate warming or help offset, or dull, warming? Right now, “The scientific community is uncertain about how the effects of clouds will change in the future,” says Hugh Morrison, a scientist at NCAR in Boulder, Colo.
That’s why, in 1997, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described clouds as “the largest source of uncertainty” in predictions of climate change. To reduce this uncertainty and improve predictions of climate change/global warming, scientists are now working to better understand the relationships between clouds and climate.
Study finds global warming from natural cloud changes is more than 3 times greater than from ‘greenhouse gases’
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
A peer-reviewed paper published in The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds that natural changes in global cloud cover over the 21 year period 1983-2004 are responsible for at least 3 times as much global warming as has been attributed to greenhouse gases over the 104 year period of 1900-2004. The paper finds the decrease in reflectance from clouds (albedo) over only the past 21 years has accounted for a change in solar energy delivered to the Earth surface of ~ 7W/m2, whereas all greenhouse gases are claimed to only account for (assuming you believe the IPCC) a ~ 2.4 W/m2 change over a much longer 104 year period. The paper also finds that climate models do not account for these cloud changes, that cloud changes are much more variable than previously thought, and that the cloud changes are not man-made or related to greenhouse gases.
Declining global average cloud height: “A significant measure of negative feedback to global warming”
Posted on February 9, 2012 by Anthony Watts
Guest post by Dr. Pat Michaels – reposted (with permission) from World Climate Report
A new paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters by Roger Davies and Mathew Molloy of the University of Auckland finds that over the past decade the global average effective cloud height has declined and that “If sustained, such a decrease would indicate a significant measure of negative cloud feedback to global warming.”
Davies and Molloy are quick to point out that part of the decline from 2000 to 2010 in cloud height is due to the timing and variability of El Niño/La Niña events over the same period, however, there still seems to be evidence that at least part of the decline may remain even when El Niño/La Niña variability is accounted for.
Figure 1 (below) shows the history of the effective cloud height, as determined by Davies and Molloy from satellite observations, from March 2000 through February 2010.
[See plot]
Figure 1. Deseasonalized anomalies of global effective cloud-top height from the 10-year mean. Solid line: 12-month running mean of 10-day anomalies. Dotted line: linear regression. Gray error bars indicate the sampling error (±8 m) in the annual average (source: Davies and Molloy, 2012).
[…]
Reference:
Davies, R., and M. Molloy, 2012. Global cloud height fluctuations measured by MISR on Terra from 2000 to 2010. Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L03701, doi:10.1029/2011GL050506.
Author: Paul
Comment:
Here’s an interesting fact. I Googled “Kirchoff Exchange Law” to learn more about this central part of the theory and found, on the second page of results, this PDF document
Most troubling is the realization that the physical cause of
blackbody radiation remains as elusive today as in the days
of Kirchho . Physicists speak of mathematics, of Planck’s
equation, but nowhere is the physical mechanism mentioned.
Planck’s frustration remains: “Therefore to attempt to draw
conclusions concerning the special properties of the particles
emitting rays from the elementary vibrations in the rays of
the normal spectrum would be a hopeless undertaking” [7;
x111]. In 1911, Einstein echoes Planck’s inability to link
thermal radiation to a physical cause: “Anyway, the h-disease
looks ever more hopeless” [66; p. 228]. Though he would
be able to bring a ready derivation of Planck’s theorem using
his coefficients [67], Einstein would never be able to extract
a proper physical link [68]. In reality, we are no closer to
understanding the complexities of blackbody radiation than
scientists were 150 years ago.
So there you have it! While some repeat ad nauseum that “the science is settled”, in fact we still do not know any mechanism whereby the radiation, on which our lives depend, functions.
Couple that with the fact that, in the troposphere, the temperature is controlled by gravity, another physical ‘law’ of which we have no idea why it operates, and there is plenty of room for some humility in our profession of ‘scientific knowledge’ don’t you think?
Come to think about it, the reason why the predicted ‘hot spot’ has never materialised is probably because the models ignore the predominant role of convection for transportation of heat in the troposphere – it ain’t ever going to be found!
Another IPCC Prediction Failure: Infrared Radiation That Warms Earth Is Doing Opposite of Model Predictions
Read here. The essential foundation of the AGW hypothesis is that CO2 atmospheric increases block the escape of infrared radiation and increasingly bounces the infrared warming back to the Earth’s surface to warm it. But when examining the empirical evidence, the infrared radiation bouncing back to Earth is mostly decreasing, not increasing. This is a likely the explanation for the disappearing global warming over the last 15 years.
Simply put, this is the exact opposite of what IPCC climate models and its faux climate scientists predicted.
Researchers Gero and Turner, using highly accurate technology, measured the decreases of infrared radiation reaching the surface and contend the decrease is due to increased cloudiness over the site – that’s called a negative feedback, which Dr. Roy Spencer has presciently espoused.
“A study published online yesterday in The Journal of Climate, however, finds that contrary to the global warming theory, infrared ‘back-radiation’ from greenhouse gases has declined over the past 14 years in the US Southern Great Plains in winter, summer, and autumn. If the anthropogenic global warming theory was correct, the infrared ‘back-radiation’ should have instead increased year-round over the past 14 years along with the steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide”……“A trend analysis was applied to a 14-year time series of downwelling spectral infrared radiance observations from the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI)…The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-year time period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.” [P. Jonathan Gero and David D. Turner 2011: Journal of Climate]
“A 1.7 W.m−2 increase in downward LWIR flux (+100 ppm CO2) increases peak summer temperature by 0.32 C and winter temperature by 0.34 C.
Maximum change occurs at night. Daytime increases are less, 0.14 and 0.17 C.”
A recommended post from the planetary vision blog, The fallacy of the greenhouse effect, explains in simple terms why the conventional explanation of the “greenhouse effect” violates both the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics:
Atmospheric & Environmental Research, Inc.’s (AER)
Radiative Transfer Working Group
The foundation of our research and model development is the validation of line-by-line radiative transfer calculations with accurate high-resolution measurements.
We have a strongly controlled climate. The solar constant
and the physical properties of water keep us controlled.
• The heat transfer from surface into space uses two
mechanisms in series: Convection in the lower atmosphere, IR
radiation in the higher atmosphere.
• The warmer it becomes, going from pole to equator, the more
important the convection part becomes. The height on which
radiation flux becomes larger than convection flux, the
convection top, rises.
• More convection means a higher tropopause, a lower cloud top
temperature, a higher condensation efficiency, and in this way a
drier upper troposphere.
• These two effects: a higher convection top and a drier upper
troposphere, both increase Outgoing Longwave Radiation. This
controls the temperature.
Galactic cosmic rays change climate, like sulphuric acid, by increasing CCN [Cloud Condensation Nucleation) ,whiter and more clouds, smaller droplets, decreased precipitation efficiency
concluding:
• Rising Outgoing Long-wave radiation with more than 3.7 W/m^2
per ºC SST cannot be the effect of rising CO2 or of the increase of
other “greenhouse” gases. Rising OLR/SST with 8.6 W/m^2K means
that the atmosphere has become more transparent to IR radiation
in the past 60 years. The “greenhouse effect” has become less.
• Solar constant and the properties of water determine our climate
• Rising surface temperature is tightly controlled by increasing wet
convection and concomitant upper tropospheric drying
• No observational evidence for influence of CO2 on past or present
climate
• Strong observational correlation of solar magnetic activity with
climate temperatures, presumably via cloud condensation nucleation
and albedo
Press Release 09-001 Scientists Take off on Historic Mission to Measure Greenhouse Gases That Have an Impact on Climate
HIAPER, one of the nation’s most advanced research aircraft, is scheduled to embark on an historic mission spanning the globe from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
Starting Jan. 7, 2009, the HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) mission will cover more than 24,000 miles as an international team of scientists makes a series of five flights over the next three years sampling the atmosphere in some of the most inaccessible regions of the world.
The goal of the mission is ambitious–the first-ever, global, real-time sampling of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases across a wide range of altitudes in the atmosphere, literally from pole-to-pole.
To date, much of our understanding of global atmospheric greenhouse gases has been acquired from ground-based observations, distant satellites, balloon launches, or highly sophisticated supercomputer models. HIAPER’s pole-to-pole mission will, for the first time, give scientists real-time global observation data to correlate with those climate models.
HIAPER is short for the National Science Foundation’s High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research. A modified Gulfstream V jet, it can fly at high altitudes for extended periods of time and can carry 5,600 pounds of sensing equipment, making it a premier aircraft for scientific discovery.
HIPPO is a joint project funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and involving researchers from Harvard University, NSF’s National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Dr. Roy Spencer has an essay below on sea surface temperatures starting to bottom out, but in addition to that, the UAH daily lower troposphere plot shows a sharp drop also.
As this graph of UAH TLT from D Kelly O’Day’s site shows, The current global anomaly is 0.044C – or very nearly zero. That’s a big drop from last month when we ended up at 0.60C.
Spaceweather.com has an excellent report today called: ALL-CLEAR IN THE STRATOSPHERE about volcanic aerosols and their impact on the earth’s climate and cooling. Turns out that they have a far greater impact than expected.
Today the earth’s stratosphere is as clean as it’s been in more than 50 years. What does that mean? It means more solar radiation can reach the earth, and is thus contributing to warming. The stratosphere is too clean – because of the lack of volcanic activity over the last 18 years. According to climate scientist Richard Keen of the University of Colorado:
“Since 1996, lunar eclipses have been bright, which means the stratosphere is relatively clear of volcanic aerosols. This is the longest period with a clear stratosphere since before 1960.”
Methane is not a “greenhouse gas.” Consult any of the IR absorption charts and you will see this is another lie from the skunks in white coats who are eating Truffles in Barcelona, Caviar in Copenhagen and who knows what in Cancun.
This also tells us what fools we’ve been with our “Jockstraps in Space” programs going to the moon for a handful of granite chips and never rising higher than 1/4th inch on the scale of a one foot home globe in the “Space Shuttle” which is little more than a Magic Mountain thrill ride for simpletons in spacesuits. The story that one was drunk when he got on the craft had my sympathy as I would be too if I ever were put on that thing.
America deserves to fail as we demonized DDT and Freon(tm) when they were two of the finest industrial chemicals ever made, but Dupont was happy to see Rachal Carson, Molina and Rowland show up so they could patent new, inferior chemicals while 100 million people died the lingering death of Malaria and every kitchen has a time bomb in it with a refrigerator running with flammable gas in the cooling coils.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 5:20 pm Jason Calley
Adrian Vance says: “Consult any of the IR absorption charts and you will see this is another lie..”
I looked. I’ll be darned! Yes, the absorption bands for methane are up in the shorter wavelengths closer to the near IR, not down where IR radiation from the surface and/or atmosphere would be. I think you are correct — either that, or we are now both confused. 🙂
I’ve learned something! Thanks!
By the way, the wiki page for GHG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential cites the IPCC as reporting that methane is (short term) 72 times as potent a GHG as CO2. Of course, the IPCC would never publish anything misleading, would they? (sarcasm off)
#
on November 30, 2010 at 5:38 pm Sandy McClintock
“Livestock’s Long Shadow” was a UN report that pointed the finger at cows (and other farm animals) as producing ‘dangerous’ levels of methane. So if you are right about Methane NOT being a GHG, then this whole report is bogus.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 6:58 pm Peter Offenhartz
Adrian Vance and Jason Calley: Methane (CH4) has a set of exceedingly strong absorption lines centered on (roughly) 1305 cm-1 (8 microns). This is well within the earthglow spectral region; indeed, I think I recall that these lines are in the so-called long wavelength window, where the atmosphere is otherwise transparent, and which is responsible for much of the earth’s radiation. So, yes, methane (by the strength of its lines) is a powerful infrared absorber; its effect, of course, depends on its integrated absorbance, which is rather small because the lines are so narrow.
I won’t comment on the IPCC’s statement because I don’t know enough, but I have trouble believing that such narrow lines can have much effect on radiative heat transfer.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 7:31 pm Adrian Vance
The IR wavelength range thought to heat the atmosphere is between 0.7 microns and 15 microns. In that range methane has negligible absorption, that on the order of nitrogen a gas classified as “transparent” to atmospheric heating IR.
The “Greens” and grant sucking scientists have been very successful in demonizing carbon and dumbing down science education. Today at Stanford every physics lecture is preceded by a five to 15 minute presentation by an anthropogenic global warming propagandist.
I was in science education film and publishing for 30 years until I became persona non-grata because I wanted to out the “global warming” fraudsters. I had the proof, but they had the grants. Follow the money. These people have totally corrupted science education and two generations of scientists who are now defective.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 9:52 pm Adrian Vance
Methane has two absorption points at about 3.75 and 8 microns that are very peaked, but very thin and the areas under the curves are very small. That is the critical fact.
Methane also auto oxidizes, hence the glowing flashes of “swamp gas” and converts to CO2 and H2O vapor which are both far greater IR absorbers, especially water vapor, but it is already responsible for 99.8% of all atmospheric heating.
All of the panic pushing over methane, which now has 1.8 parts per million in air is nothing more than the demonization of carbon in search of something more to tax and a way to control the people. This is a total fraud and panic power politics.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 10:04 pm Peter Offenhartz
Adrian:
I am confused by your statement that absorption by methane is comparable to absorption by nitrogen. N2 is a molecule with zero dipole moment, regardless of vibrational state. Its absorption of infrared must therefore take place via a very inefficient mechanism (magnetic dipole?). While CH4 is a very very strong (electronic dipole) absorber. True, the concentrations of the two molecules differ by a factor circa 10^9, but is that enough to overcome the difference in quantum efficiency?
I am the original author of MOLSPEC, and I can still run calculations with variable concentrations of gas mixtures. So if you have a simulation that you would like me to run, let me know. But it is important to note that the concentration of N2 is pretty well fixed, while the concentration of CH4 (in principle) is variable. So increasing CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere can surely contribute to changes in atmospheric absorption of outbound radiation, and thus affect global energy balance.
#
on December 1, 2010 at 4:51 am Jason Calley
E.M., firstly, my apologies if I have inadvertently swerved the topic to absorption lines of methane instead of the truly noteworthy fact of upcoming Japanese production. I seem to remember that a new LNG production and shipping facility was announced a couple of years ago for the Bahamas. Maybe long term facility for clathrate sources?
Secondly, I do still wonder what is the deal with methane absorption lines — heck, I wonder what the deal is with ALL the discussed GHG lines. I have come to the point where any time someone implies that “the physics is simple” my hackles go up. the only simple physics I have ever seen is on blackboards, not in the real world.
Do we KNOW from actual experiment the absorptive and radiative of methane (or CO2) when mixed in the atmosphere? I do not want to be either an idiot or a pedant, but I am not asking “have we made computer models of methane” or even “have we measured pure samples of methane and can infer what a mixture with nitrogen and oxygen would do.” As I say, real physics is far too often not simple… Has someone taken air samples, added appropriate amounts of methane (or CO2) and accurately measured what happens when you put the samples out in the sunshine?
Pardon me if I am being stupid, but I have seen (on various topics) discussions that go on at great length, where all sides argue in good faith — and extraordinary depth! — but no one has done real experiments. Have we actually measured real atmospheric mixes of gases for real world responses?
There you’ll find experiments of integrated line strengths of CO2 spectra firstly as pure CO2, then mixed with He then mixed with N2 plus more info including Fig. 2 “Optical density of methane at different pressures in the presence of foreign gases”, which may be of use to you.
regards
p.s. All the more interesting because you will also find an “Open Review” of the paper.
#
on December 1, 2010 at 8:06 am Adrian Vance
Nitrogen was not a good example, but it coincidentally has two very small absorption points where methane has two tall spikes, but very little area under the curves on the American Meteorlogical chart I am using. And, the two nitrogen absorption points are of much shorter wavelength, hence of much greater energy.
It is my understanding that perfectly symmetrical molecules, like O2 and N2 are not good IR absorbers where H2O is as it is not symmetrical. CH4 is symmetrical and CO2 is and not as one [O] is bonded to an “S” electron and can be all over the surface and in a resonant position only a fraction of the time.
Nonetheless, it is inescapable that methane is a very poor absorber compared to water vapor by a factor of 20 and not “a greater greenhouse gas by a factor of 20, 26, 90 or 300,” as claimed by the anthropogenic global warming panic pushers.
#
on December 1, 2010 at 8:14 am Adrian Vance
One of the great problems with discussing methane in the atmosphere is that is auto-oxidizes and especially well in sunlight. Thus, whatever quantity emerges from swamps or thawing tundra is quickly converted to carbon dioxide and water.
The present concentration of methane in air is 1.8 parts per million. It is so rare it is ridiculous to talk about it as a driver of anything. CO2 is now at about 390 ppm and still very much a trace and by definition insignificant, i.e. of no consequence. But…
Petroleum and coal that produce 80% of all energy are 84%+ carbon. The control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power than anything since the Magna Carta that transferred power from the Kings and Dukes to the people in 1215 AD. It is just that simple.
See plot: “ABSORPTION SPECTRA FOR THE MAJOR NATURAL GREENHOUSE GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE”
This is an official set of graphs from the American Meteorological Society. The vertical red lines were added to show infrared range normally considered in the analysis of atmospheric heating, “IR absorption.”
When the chart is analyzed in terms of the areas under the absorption curves we find that water vapor has 3.3 times the area of carbon dioxide, but it also absorbs more in the shorter wavelengths which are higher energy by:
E = (h X c)/w
Where E is energy in Joules, h is Planck’s constant, c is the speed of light, w is wavelength in micrometers, millionths of a meter. The net energy absorption is six times greater for water vapor than that seen for carbon dioxide per molecule and where water vapor has 200 times as many molecules as CO2 it has 1200 times the overall heating effect.
Note that methane and nitrous oxide which are often called “very powerful greenhouse gases” by alarmists are very poor absorbers of infrared as well as nearly nonexistant in the atmosphere.
Methane has 1.7 parts per million in the atmosphere or one in every 18,000 molecules in air is methane and it auto-oxidizes in sunlight so it has a very short lift expectancy in the very environment it is claimed to be harming. The problem with methane is that a little comes from cows and many greens are vegans who do not want anyone to eat meat, thus the methane myth.
When methane oxidizes in air, is becomes water vapor and CO2 and as such actually absorbs more heat energy from sunlight than it would as methane in yet another irony in this insane controversy.
In addition to the limited GHG effect of methane, we also have the inconvenient fact that levels are not increasing
From the IPCC itself, we have
Direct atmospheric measurements of the gas made at a wide variety of sites in both hemispheres over the last 25 years show that, although the abundance of CH4 has increased by about 30% during that time, its growth rate has decreased substantially from highs of greater than 1% yr–1 in the late 1 70s and early 1980s (Blake and Rowland, 1988) to lows of close to zero towards the end of the 1990s (Dlugokencky et al., 1998; Simpson et al., 2002). The slowdown in the growth rate began in the 1980s, decreasing from 14 ppb yr–1 (about 1% yr–1) in 1984 to close to zero during 1999 to 2005, for the network of surface sites maintained by NOAA/GMD
Level Of Important Greenhouse Gas Has Stopped Growing: Seven-Year Stabilization Of Methane May Slow Global Warming
ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2006) — Scientists at UC Irvine have determined that levels of atmospheric methane – an influential greenhouse gas – have stayed nearly flat for the past seven years, which follows a rise that spanned at least two decades.
This finding indicates that methane may no longer be as large a global warming threat as previously thought, and it provides evidence that methane levels can be controlled. Scientists also found that pulses of increased methane were paralleled by increases of ethane, a gas known to be emitted during fires. This is further indication that methane is formed during biomass burning, and that large-scale fires can be a big source of atmospheric methane.
Professors F. Sherwood Rowland and Donald R. Blake, along with researchers Isobel J. Simpson and Simone Meinardi, believe one reason for the slowdown in methane concentration growth may be leak-preventing repairs made to oil and gas lines and storage facilities, which can release methane into the atmosphere. Other reasons may include a slower growth or decrease in methane emissions from coal mining, rice paddies and natural gas production.
I actually posted on this topic in the last couple of days. The fact that methane levels have remained constant over the last 5 years or so is presented in IPCC AR4.
Although the graph does not necessarily indicate a continuation of the 2006-2008 rise (but it does correlate much better with global temperature than CO2)..
Scepticism of AGW has no bearing unless backed by scientific rebuttal i.e. exposure of the fallacy of the AGW hypothesis.
The assertion that anthropogenic climate change (AGW – ACC) is a “well established fact” is exposed as unfounded by the rebuttal papers available.
One recent paper
“Falsi fication Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse E ffects Within The Frame Of Physics”
by physicists Gerlich and Tscheuschner (G&T 2009)
does just that several times over. Consequently it is hated and denigrated by AGW proponents with vehemence.
G&T is heavy going but I’ve found a synopsis (G&T “Lite”).
This is from “Solar Flux” by Joe Postma
———————————————————————————————————-
SUMMARY
1- The radiative surface of the earth is not the same thing as the ground surface of the earth. Therefore, comparing the actual ground-air temperature to the theoretical radiative equilibrium blackbody temperature is an invalid concept – there is no reason to do this from the outset. The theoretical radiative equilibrium temperature is measured to be exactly just that, on average, as seen from space.
2- The simple Ideal Gas Law, and the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, tell us that the atmospheric temperature increases with density in a gravitational field.
3- Given the dry adiabatic lapse rate is known from thermodynamics and meteorology, and the altitude of the radiative equilibrium temperature is known from measurement, the average ground surface air temperature is calculated to be +220C, via thermodynamics.
Therefore the real question and science is found in: How much does outgoing radiative transfer contribute to the height of the radiative equilibrium surface, thus contributing to warming of the ground-air due to thermodynamics? Then, how much is this height affected by CO2? Then, how much by anthropogenic CO2? Satellite-measured data has already answered the last question for us: It’s too little to matter! Thus the need for positive feedbacks (see last).
Additionally: The idea that the ground-air temperature is due exclusively to the mechanics of outgoing infrared radiative transfer is false. A significant portion of ground-air heating must be due to simple thermodynamics a-priori, because the majority of incoming solar energy is absorbed directly by the atmosphere, raising the radiative equilibrium surface far above the ground.
There is no such thing as an atmospheric Greenhouse Effect as popularly understood by the lay-public: the analogy was never valid to begin with. A horticulturalists’ greenhouse is warm because the glass prevents convective cooling of sunlight-heated air. It is not because the glass absorbs or traps infrared radiation. IR transparent glass could be used and a greenhouse will still be warm. Air actually conducts & convects heat away from sun-lit ground, acting rather as an air-conditioner. The sun-lit surface of the moon is after-all, with no atmosphere, hundreds of degrees hotter than the Stefan-Boltzmann equation would predict. This is because there is no atmosphere present to share the thermal load, distribute the heat, and convectively cool the lunar regolith. The atmospheric greenhouse analogy is invalid and misleading, and sidesteps true understanding based on well-accepted theory and physical principles. We need a better mnemonic than the one we have.
“The present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2, limits real understanding. So does the replacement of physical theory by model simulation”1 and simple-minded misleading mnemonics. Theory is further abused in the error of proposing that the ground-air temperature is determined exclusively by the amount of radiation in it, rather than the amount of radiation being determined by the temperature. Any stellar atmospherics astrophysicist knows that the amount of radiation in an atmosphere is determined by its temperature, not the other way around. If it was, then astrophysicists should concern themselves with the “Greenhouse Effect” in stars…They don’t.
Promoting livestock methane emissions as sustainable and not responsible for global warming
About
Pastural Farming Climate Research Incorporated
OUR PURPOSE
* To promote livestock methane emissions as sustainable and not responsible for global warming.
* To study and comment on research by other organisations that relate to pastoral farming carbon emissions.
* To initiate an academic study to determine the net effect livestock have on the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and whether what ever effect they do have could cause global warming.
* To advocate fairness for agricultural producers under any carbon emission laws or regulations.
This post seems to sum-up Pastural Farming’s perspective
——————————————————————————————————————— Emission Factors
Written By: Robin Grieve
In just 6 weeks agriculture will start the voluntary reporting of the bullshit emissions as calculated using the science defying logic of the Ministry of Bullshit. This is a new ministry that encompasses the Ministry’s of Climate Change issues, Climate Change Negotiations, Environment and Agriculture. The Ministers of Bullshit are jointly, Nick Smith, Tim Grosser, Kate Wilkinson and the hapless David Carter. These people are well suited to the job.
Continues with emission factors (You’ve gotta see this) for:-
New Zealand will be leading the way on tackling agriculture emission reduction, says Fran O’Sullivan.
Trade Minister Tim Groser deserves special mention for the way in which he has married NZ’s objectives on the trade and climate change front.
Groser’s brainchild – a global alliance to research ways of reducing agriculture emissions – has gained huge support from powerhouse countries like the US and India, supported by others like Denmark, Japan, Australia and Canada.
The launch of the alliance in Copenhagen last week was a bright spot in an otherwise spectacularly disastrous conference. Groser – who is a very adroit and experienced negotiator having led the agriculture committee negotiations at the World Trade Organisation – described the atmosphere at the conference as “madness”.
But irrespective of the flim-flam at Copenhagen, NZ is set to drive forward the global agenda to mitigate the effects of climate change.
In March, representatives from up to 30 nations that are signing up for the global alliance will come to New Zealand for a summit on agriculture emissions.
This is serious stuff.
Each country is expected to field at least two representatives who are likely to be a policy wonk and a scientist.
The alliance will develop new farming approaches and develop environmental technologies that reduce emissions from livestock, crops and rice production.
What’s notable is the big NZ financial contribution – some $45 million of the $150 million so far committed.
This might seem over the top. But with nearly 50 per cent of NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture it is important that action is taken to protect a sector which drives more than 35 per cent of our exports.
New Zealand’s leadership has been endorsed by other nations – like the US which has upped its agriculture emissions budget by US$90 ($128) million.
But it’s important to note this foreign policy initiative has not been universally acclaimed.
The US Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is concerned that research agenda will “simply duplicate the pitfalls we’ve seen within the US agriculture research agenda, which for example spends billions of dollars on genetically engineered seeds that largely benefit transnational corporations and can take a decade to develop”, said its president Jim Harkness.
“The loss of traditional knowledge and seed varieties in the Global South is a much more urgent crisis, and much more crippling to the world’s capacity to address climate change, than what has been the traditional US research model. Unfortunately, national research institutions have largely ignored the types of low-input, sustainable, small-scale systems that are needed for both food security and climate-friendly farming.”
Back home, Labour is still making a great deal out of the fact that National canned the previous Government’s $700 million Fast Forward fund over 10-15 years. At issue is whether the $45 million the Government is now putting into agriculture emissions reduction will be enough to offset prior Budget cuts and bolster research funding for the sector which underpins one of our prime export industries.
Putting that to one side, it’s fair to say NZ’s negotiators also survived the first hurdle at Copenhagen in their quest to get substantial changes to the rules relating to forestry, and the ability for New Zealand to offset greenhouse gas emissions outside our borders.
In NZ, it is important to get the existing Kyoto Protocol rules changed so this country is not overly penalised when forests are felled and replaced by trees planted elsewhere or when trees are converted to wood products such as timber and fibre board.
New Zealand is also seeking rule changes over land use and the international carbon market – which the Ministry for the Environment says are important because it will impact on New Zealand’s ability to meet its future target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft negotiating agreement contains clauses which give effect to the rules NZ wants. But they are not cast in concrete. The draft text has plenty of “square brackets” which indicate particular clauses are still disputed.
Groser and his fellow Cabinet Minister Nick Smith seem to have made the best out of the hand that was dealt to them at Copenhagen.
——————————————————————————————————————– So that was COP15, what’s happened since re the $45 million.
Now we’re at COP16 and the Kyoto Protocol is back in the frame – right now!
Japan’s bailed, Canada and Russia are similarly unenthusiastic, so what’s New Zealand’s position?
Global Research Alliance Secretariat
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington 6140
NEW ZEALAND
Research Groups
Paddy rice
Crops
Livestock
Livestock Research Group
The Livestock Research Group of the Alliance is focused on reducing greenhouse gas intensity and improving overall production efficiency of livestock systems.
The Group will work together to find ways to limit emissions of methane (CH4), emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and to increase the quantity of carbon (C) stored in those soils managed as part of a livestock production system. The Group will work to better quantify emissions from livestock systems so that national inventories are improved and farmers, land managers and policy makers around the world have an improved knowledge of the source and extent of emissions from different components of livestock systems. A further key activity of the Livestock Research Group will be transferring knowledge, practices and technologies to stakeholders such that research and development outputs result in beneficial greenhouse gas outcomes.
The partnership will address ruminants and non-ruminants livestock and the multiplicity of systems of production associated with these two principle livestock types.
Gas emissions to be studied for quantification and management are:
* CH4 emissions from waste management
* CH4 from enteric fermentation
* N2O emissions from fertilizers
* N2O emissions from animal wastes
* Increased soil C storage
* Other emissions of specific national interest produced as a result of the management of livestock for food production
The Livestock Research Group held its first meeting 8-9 October 2010 in Banff, Canada
The meeting was attended by 27 countries involved in the Alliance and the open session was attended by other interested parties.
For further information on this event see the Summary Meeting report, and presentations given during the Open Session.
Livestock Research Group Meeting
Banff Park Lodge, Banff, Canada 8-9 October 2010
Overview and Meeting Summary
BACKGROUND
The Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (‘the Alliance’) was launched in December 2009 and currently has 30 member countries.
The Livestock Research Group is one of three groups established under the Alliance at the inaugural Senior Officials Meeting held in New Zealand in April 2010. The other two Research Groups are ‘Croplands’ and ‘Paddy Rice’. That meeting also agreed that New Zealand and the Netherlands would jointly coordinate the Livestock Research Group. All 30 member countries are currently participating in the Livestock Research Group, along with six observers. For more information, please see http://www.globalresearchalliance.org/livestock-research-group.aspx.
LIVESTOCK RESEARCH GROUP MEETING
The first meeting of the Livestock Research Group was held in Banff, Canada from 8-9 October 2010, immediately following the international Greenhouse Gas and Animal Agriculture (GGAA) Conference from 3-7 October.
The meeting was held in two parts:
• An open session for GGAA conference delegates was held from 9am-12pm on Friday 8 October. This session provided an overview of the Alliance concept and an update on progress with its establishment since it was launched in December 2009, as well as the opportunity to discuss the development of the Livestock Research Group. Approximately 190 people attended. Presentations will be available from the Livestock area of the Alliance website.
• A closed session for Livestock Research Group representatives from Alliance countries then ran from 12pm Friday to 3pm Saturday.
Both sessions were co-chaired by New Zealand (Dr Harry Clark, New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre) and the Netherlands (Dr Martin Scholten, Wageningen UR) as the co-coordinating countries of the Livestock Research Group.
The two-day meeting achieved the following:
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• Briefing and update on progress with establishing the Alliance and its Livestock Research Group to a broad audience of GGAA delegates.
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• Development of a collective understanding of participating Alliance countries’ activities and priorities for livestock emissions research, and agreement that this information should be turned into a publication in the near future.
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• Agreement that in the short term, the Livestock Group should focus its attention on:
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– Further work to gather information from Alliance countries on their livestock emissions research activities.
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– Formation of an initial two sub-groups: Ruminants and Non-Ruminants.
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– Development of a set of topics/projects for immediate action by the sub-groups, focused initially on: facilitating data sharing; developing protocols and standardised methodologies and best practice guidelines for measurement techniques; preparing synthesis papers on growing areas of livestock emissions research.
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– Creation of an international database of researchers and other experts (including policy) in livestock emissions, building on the existing LEARN database maintained by New Zealand.
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– Encouragement of widespread discussions within countries on the Alliance and its Livestock Research Group to help improve public awareness of the initiative.
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The Livestock Group will meet again in a closed session in early 2011 as part of a wider Alliance Senior Officials Meeting, and will report back to Alliance Ministers at a Summit in mid-2011.
For more information or to find out who your in-country Alliance Livestock Group representative is, please contact the Secretariat (secretariat@globalresearchalliance.org) or visit http://www.globalresearchalliance.org.
——————————————————————————————————————– And all under the assumption of AGW
Response from the Alliance contact Laura.Hogg (Laura.Hogg@maf.govt.nz)
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Hi Richard,
Thanks for your enquiry. I work in the Alliance Secretariat here at the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. New Zealand’s investment in the
Global Research Alliance is a matter for domestic processes at the
moment, therefore we are not in a position to make information available
about particular allocations or other expenditure.
We are always welcoming of interest in the Alliance. It would be great
to know a little more of your background?
Many thanks, Laura
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My reply to Laura
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Laura,
Thanks for the response. When do you think the information will become available?
“We are always welcoming of interest in the Alliance. It would be great
to know a little more of your background?”
My background is energy (Int NZCE Mech) and economics (NZ Dip Bus) but am not working in either at the moment unfortunately so am keeping my hand in by studying climate science and all the ramifications of carbon emission mitigation measures.
I have a handle on the economic costs of carbon emissions mitigation and the impacts on the various sectors and agriculture is just one of those. Scrutiny of the scientific basis for these costs and impacts reveals that they are unnecessary.
From the physics and thermodynamics point of view, I have a particular interest in radiation transfer and how that is implemented in global climate models (GCMs). I’m in a position therefore to dispute the AGW assumption that animal emissions mitigation research is based on i.e. I’m of the opinion that research would be better directed at the heating effects and radiative properties of GHGs in the atmosphere rather than towards animal emissions which seems to me to be cart-before-the-horse.
For methane (or CO2) to be a problem it must be proved firstly that:-
1) Methane occupies a place on the atmospheric absorption spectrum that intercepts amounts of out-going radiation sufficient to create heating and how much of that is of anthropogenic origin?
2) Methane that does absorb out-going radiation has a significant heating effect in itself and compared to the heating and cooling effect of water vapour.
3) Methane molecules are of sufficient number in the atmosphere to be worthy of consideration in themselves and compared to water vapour.
4) Methane heat produced as a result of out-going radiation absorption as quantified by measurement is abnormal and directly correlated and attributable to anthropogenic emissions.
5) Methane absorption of out-going long-wave (OLR – LWIR) radiation over-rides in-coming short-wave solar radiation (SWIR) on balance.
The same conditions are applicable to CO2.
I also monitor as many metrics as possible (air, ocean, temp, heat etc) and note that the GHG correlations with warming have been broken over the last decade.
Given the above, the NZ ETS and animal emissions research is based on faulty IPCC science. As you can see from my 5 points, the issue starts with just one CO2 or CH4 molecule and what happens to it at altitudes 0 to Top of Atmosphere (TOA) when radiation strikes and not in the stomach of a sheep.
So it is of great interest to me to know where NZs $45m pledge is actually being spent and also where the total $150m pledge is actually being spent when I can prove that it is being mis-spent in the first place. The issue is also topical with COP16 underway and Japan, Canada and Russia bailing out of the Kyoto Protocol.
Have added this
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Oops
“I also monitor as many metrics as possible (air, ocean, temp, heat
etc) and note that the GHG correlations with warming have been broken
over the last decade.”
I should say that CH4 has an atmospheric temp correlation (but not ocean heat) over the last decade that CO2 does not. Whether there’s a long-term correlation I don’t know (there isn’t in the case of CO2).
Note that there has been no answer yet to this question
“When do you think the information will become available?”
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Thank you Richard, that’s a comprehensive background.
Regards, Laura
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So I’m no wiser as to the research allocation and spending so far of the $45m.
Except that in showing my colours I may have been shut out due to MAF’s adherence to the AGW consensus.
I doubt there will be anything more forthcoming from Laura but you never know, that may have just been a quick reply and she’s now drafting something up – here’s hoping.
Except for a very small area. Which makes my condition 5) above look silly depending on whether the small amount of excitation raises molecule temperature (heating)
The same can be said for CO2 but the absorption below 5 micro metres is perhaps a little more in proportion to methane.
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2) Over the last decade, methane levels (ppb) have plateaued and even correlate with temp a little (far better than CO2) although again there’s no correlation prior to the 70s.
“we feel confident in suggesting that if the recent pause in CH4 increase is indeed temporary, it will likely be followed by a decrease in CH4 concentration, since that would be the next logical step in the observed progression from significant, to much smaller to no yearly CH4 increase.”
“So what has been responsible for the recent dramatic slowdown — and possible ultimate cessation — of the post-Little Ice Age upward trend in the air’s CH4 concentration? We believe that some significant portion of the welcome development can be attributed to the cumulative effect of a number of indirect impacts of the concomitant increase in the air’s CO2 concentration, as described in several of our Subject Index Summaries”
See Subject Index Summaries links on source page.
“Other phenomena are undoubtedly helping to reduce the air’s methane concentration as well; and it will be exciting to see, in the days and years ahead, if their combined influence will actually lead to a sustained downward trend in the concentration of this important greenhouse gas. Such a result would be like having one’s cake and eating it too; for it would enable the planet to reap the great biological benefits that come from atmospheric CO2 enrichment without creating a significant net increase in the atmosphere’s greenhouse effect.”
A team of scientists who study pollution’s role in global warming are outraged at a GOP Senator who, they say, has maligned their work as wasteful and petty by describing it as a study of “cow burps.”
“This was not funded with earmarks and it was not a study about cow burps,” said John Aber, an environmental scientist and provost of the University of New Hampshire.
“It’s not wasteful,” he said. “It’s important.”
Sen. Tom Coburn, R- Okla., released on Monday his annual “Wastebook” report, a look at 100 projects that received federal funding which, he says, contributed to record deficits in the past year.
Among those projects was a $700,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture to a team of environmental scientists at the University of New Hampshire to study greenhouse gas emissions – the chemicals associated with global warming – in the dairy industry.
Coburn’s “Wastebook” quotes one of the project’s researchers telling a local New Hampshire paper that “cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence.”
Continues………
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This research is a result of the GLOBAL RESEARCH ALLIANCE formed at COP15 that NZ is a partner to (and administrator).
Tuesday, 22 February 2011, 10:31 am
Press Release: NZRMMC
22 February 2011
The New Zealand Ruminant Methane Measurement Centre (NZRMMC) was officially opened today by the Hon. David Carter, Minister of Agriculture. The NZRMMC is the largest purpose built facility of its kind in the world and provides New Zealand scientists with an enviable opportunity to accurately measure methane emissions from more than 25 ruminant animals at the same time.
link to a paper by Dr. Timo Niroma, a respected Finnish climatologist who has linked solar activity with temperature in many papers
PDF av here http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/d31643021826h6x6/
abstract
The quiet Sun of the Maunder Minimum in the latter part of the 1600’s is compared to the hyper-active Sun in the 1900’s. Solar influence upon Earth’s climate in these times of very different sunspot abundance is investigated. A second thread in this study is the possible influence of Jupiter in the observed variability of solar behaviour. Thirdly, is an analysis of the solar condition right now (late 2008) and its possible implications for climate on Earth; including what might be ahead. Last is a critical examination of IPCC’s hypothesis that changing atmospheric CO2 concentration is the dominant contributor to changing climate.
RSS data: 2010 not the warmest year in satellite record, but a close second
Posted on January 3, 2011 by Anthony Watts
The RSS data for Dec 2010 is out and available here, and I’m second in publishing it. The honor for being first goes to Lucia at the Blackboard here.
The true effect of windblown material is only now coming to be appreciated
ON MAY 26th 2008 Germany turned red. The winds of change, though, were meteorological, not political. Unusual weather brought iron-rich dust from Africa to Europe, not only altering the colour of roofs and cars on the continent but also, according to recent calculations by Max Bangert, a graduate student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, making the place about a quarter of a degree colder for as long as the dust stayed in the air.
Unusual for Germany; commonplace for the planet as a whole. The Sahara and other bone-dry places continually send dust up into the atmosphere, where it may travel thousands of kilometres and influence regional weather, the global climate and even the growth of forests halfway around the planet………continues
Found this fascinating blog that postulates there is no greenhouse effect and then proves it using Venus’ atmosphere and looking at temperatures at the same pressure in both atmospheres. By correcting for the extra solar radiation that Venus receives, and the increased black body radiation from its higher temperature, he calculates the expected temperature on Venus. The two match remarkably well for a number of different pressures. I can’t fault his physics.
I’m not sure where to put this but here it is… [Thanks, Quentin. Atmosphere seems the right place. – Richard T]
Nature’s continued supply of atmospheric CO2 in LARGE qty
MANILA – PHILIPPINE authorities said on Sunday more people had been evacuated from towns and villages near a volcanic island close to the capital amid increasing signs of seismic activity. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said the number evacuated had increased to 1,375 as of Saturday from four towns near Taal volcano, while seismologists recorded 10 volcanic earthquakes overnight. Water temperatures and gas emissions also increased, seismologists said. ‘This large rise in CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration indicates gas release from the magma at depth,’ the council said.
NOTE LARGE RISE in CO2!! And this is a tom tiddler so far!
The increased levels of CO2 are measured in the vicinity of the volcano and it’s reasonable they should rise. “Normal” annual volcanic emissions seem to be about a few percent of humanity’s annual emissions. But I’m open to correction.
Searching for evidence of the contribution to global CO2 levels from volcanic activity, I have discovered that a) it seems low; b) the emissions are difficult to observe and measure; and c) the available figures are of low reliability.
I don’t have emission figures for specific large eruptions.
I’m wondering if someone can help me. I know the temperature of the troposphere is measured using radiosondes & satellites, but how do they measure the temperature of the stratosphere, by the same methods?
The reason I’m asking is that AGW proponents always say that the temperature readings for the troposphere are uncertain due to problems in the way the data is gathered, yet then quickly move on to say it’s irrelevant (cough, cough, bs) as the stratosphere is cooling & shrinking. I know the strat has to be cooling whilst the tropo is warming simultaneously to prove AGW, but if the means of measuring one is ok why is that same means not ok for the other (assuming that it is measured that way of course)?
(C) 10°N to 10°S monthly average anomalies of temperatures and water vapor relative to the period from 1993 to 2006. 100-hPa monthly averaged temperature anomalies are taken from the Japanese Reanalysis
And:-
Representative uncertainties are given by the colored bars; for the satellite data sets, these show the precision as indicated by the monthly standard deviations, while for the balloon data set this is the estimated uncertainty provided in the Boulder data files.
The 100hPa (tropopause – top of trop, bottom of strat) temperature uncertainty range is 2C but hard to see cooling, warming or anything else although it is the zone above that and below the mesosphere that you are interested in.
I cannot see a reference to “the Japanese Reanalysis”. That reanalysis would give you the data sources that would include satellite and balloon I would think – just as with troposphere.
The first sentence of Solomon et al states: “Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000” and (same paragraph): “These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change”
And on the same page: “….even up-to-date stratospheric chemistry-climate models do not consistently reproduce tropical tropopause minimum temperatures (10) or recently observed changes in stratospheric water vapor (11)” and “Increases in stratospheric water vapor act to cool the stratosphere but to warm the troposphere, whereas the reverse is true for stratospheric water vapor decreases”
Then (page 4): “Figure 3 thus shows that the decline in stratospheric water vapor after 2000 should be expected to have significantly contributed to the flattening of the global warming trend in the past decade, and stratospheric water increases may also have acted to steepen the observed warming trend in the 1990s”.
Therefore, to say as in your comment “the stratosphere is cooling” is inconsistent with water vapour decline according to Soloman. I suggest that you ask that they cite observed (not modeled) data since 2000 (beware of “the long-term trend”) to support their claim and if it’s a reanalysis, get a reference to it and check it out because there has been questions over some reanalysis sets recently after V&V checks (get back to me if you get stuck).
You can only get plots for two years at a time and there’s no global average but you can do comparisons of say mid-strat 30mb/hPa and 10mb/hPa of e.g. tropical stratosphere 25N – 25S 2010 & 2011 vs 1979 &1980, 1999 & 2000 etc.
Interesting too to see how the 2yr mean fits with climate max, climate min and climate mean but note carefully that the climate changes from 79-04 (1979-2006) to 79-06 (2007) to 79-07 (2009) to 79-08 (2010).
Looking at 30hPa 25N – 25S and bringing up 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2010 in tabs across the browser it’s hard to discern any trend one way or another, they’re all around -57ish on average except 2001 at -59 and that was at 79-04 climate minimum note. You could look at all 11 plots for 2000 – 2010 to check.
An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends
Summary and Conclusions
[56] Since the previous major assessment of stratospheric
temperature trends [Ramaswamy et al., 2001], understanding of stratospheric climate change has increased for several reasons: (1) there is improved knowledge regarding the uncertainties inherent in both remotely sensed and radiosonde data at stratospheric levels; (2) there are several independent analyses of satellite and radiosonde data sets, with distinct homogeneity adjustments; and (3) the length of
the data records has increased with the passing of time. As a result, we now have increased confidence in our understanding of the latitudinal structure and the magnitude of trends in the lower stratosphere. However, we also acknowledge that there are substantial uncertainties in quantifying trends in the middle and upper stratosphere, as they are derived primarily from a single analysis of one data set (SSU data).
Lots about “the long-term trend” since 1979 but a look at Figures 4, 10, 14, 17 and 18 shows that there’s been no recent trend from the mid 1990s and that the cooling occurred prior to that. This is consistent with Solomon et al.
Research from The University of Auckland on changes in cloud height in the decade to 2010 has provided the first hint of a cooling mechanism that may be in play in the Earth’s climate.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the analysis of the first ten years of data from the NASA Terra satellite revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around 1 per cent over the decade, or around 30 to 40 metres. Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.
Q. Who named the PDO and can you give me more indepth information?
A. The term PDO was coined in about 1996 by Steven Hare at the University of Washington. He, along with colleagues Nathan Mantua, Yuan Zhang, Robert Francis and Mike Wallace discovered the pattern as part of work on fish population fluctuations. They have online papers that provide excellent information.
Interesting that one of the major drivers if internal variability of our climate system (PDO) was not actually named until 1996
Which, funnily enough, is about two years before “The Pause” (drum roll please)
A tale of two hemispheres
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/08/a-tale-of-two-hemispheres/
Albedo, Earthshine, Reflectivity and Clouds
Earthshine Reveals Climate Changes
http://www.spacearchive.info/news-2004-05-27-cit.htm
Earth’s Albedo Tells an Interesting Story
Posted on October 17, 2007 by Anthony Watts
Earthshine Project
The Earth’s climate depends on the net sunlight deposited on the globe, which is critically sensitive to the Earth’s albedo. A global and absolutely calibrated albedo can be determined by measuring the amount of sunlight reflected from the Earth and, in turn, back to the Earth from the dark portion of the face of the Moon (the `earthshine’ or `ashen light’).
Earths Albedo – Google Search
The message in the clouds
Earth’s Albedo: Cloud + Earthshine Projects
The Greenhouse Gas Theory Under a Cloud
Climate Change, the Sun and the Albedo Effect
Mar 29, 2010 John O’Sullivan
Special Collections in AGU Journals
Global Dimming and Brightening
INDEX
Clouds Play X-Factor in Global Warming
November 2, 2010
It is a little-known but significant fact that about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by clouds at any given time. But not all clouds are the same; different types of clouds affect the Earth’s climate differently. While some types of clouds help to warm the Earth, others help to cool it.
Currently, all of the Earth’s clouds together exert a net cooling effect on our planet. But the large and opposing influences of clouds on the Earth’s climate begs the question: What will be the net effect of all of the Earth’s clouds on climate as the Earth continues to warm in the future? Will clouds accelerate warming or help offset, or dull, warming? Right now, “The scientific community is uncertain about how the effects of clouds will change in the future,” says Hugh Morrison, a scientist at NCAR in Boulder, Colo.
That’s why, in 1997, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described clouds as “the largest source of uncertainty” in predictions of climate change. To reduce this uncertainty and improve predictions of climate change/global warming, scientists are now working to better understand the relationships between clouds and climate.
Study finds global warming from natural cloud changes is more than 3 times greater than from ‘greenhouse gases’
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
A peer-reviewed paper published in The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds that natural changes in global cloud cover over the 21 year period 1983-2004 are responsible for at least 3 times as much global warming as has been attributed to greenhouse gases over the 104 year period of 1900-2004. The paper finds the decrease in reflectance from clouds (albedo) over only the past 21 years has accounted for a change in solar energy delivered to the Earth surface of ~ 7W/m2, whereas all greenhouse gases are claimed to only account for (assuming you believe the IPCC) a ~ 2.4 W/m2 change over a much longer 104 year period. The paper also finds that climate models do not account for these cloud changes, that cloud changes are much more variable than previously thought, and that the cloud changes are not man-made or related to greenhouse gases.
Continues……..
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/05/study-finds-global-warming-from-natural.html
Declining global average cloud height: “A significant measure of negative feedback to global warming”
Posted on February 9, 2012 by Anthony Watts
Guest post by Dr. Pat Michaels – reposted (with permission) from World Climate Report
A new paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters by Roger Davies and Mathew Molloy of the University of Auckland finds that over the past decade the global average effective cloud height has declined and that “If sustained, such a decrease would indicate a significant measure of negative cloud feedback to global warming.”
Davies and Molloy are quick to point out that part of the decline from 2000 to 2010 in cloud height is due to the timing and variability of El Niño/La Niña events over the same period, however, there still seems to be evidence that at least part of the decline may remain even when El Niño/La Niña variability is accounted for.
Figure 1 (below) shows the history of the effective cloud height, as determined by Davies and Molloy from satellite observations, from March 2000 through February 2010.
[See plot]
Figure 1. Deseasonalized anomalies of global effective cloud-top height from the 10-year mean. Solid line: 12-month running mean of 10-day anomalies. Dotted line: linear regression. Gray error bars indicate the sampling error (±8 m) in the annual average (source: Davies and Molloy, 2012).
[…]
Reference:
Davies, R., and M. Molloy, 2012. Global cloud height fluctuations measured by MISR on Terra from 2000 to 2010. Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L03701, doi:10.1029/2011GL050506.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/09/declining-global-average-cloud-height-a-significant-measure-of-negative-feedback-to-global-warming/
Atmospheric Thermodynamics and Heat
Radiative Imbalance
There is a new comment on the post “Shock! Climate models can’t even predict a linear rise”.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/shock-climate-models-cant-even-predict-linear-rise/
Author: Paul
Comment:
Here’s an interesting fact. I Googled “Kirchoff Exchange Law” to learn more about this central part of the theory and found, on the second page of results, this PDF document
Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Emission: 150 Years
which concludes : —
So there you have it! While some repeat ad nauseum that “the science is settled”, in fact we still do not know any mechanism whereby the radiation, on which our lives depend, functions.
Couple that with the fact that, in the troposphere, the temperature is controlled by gravity, another physical ‘law’ of which we have no idea why it operates, and there is plenty of room for some humility in our profession of ‘scientific knowledge’ don’t you think?
Come to think about it, the reason why the predicted ‘hot spot’ has never materialised is probably because the models ignore the predominant role of convection for transportation of heat in the troposphere – it ain’t ever going to be found!
Big discussion on the missing “hot spot” here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/is-the-western-climate-establishment-corrupt-part-8-do-most-western-climate-scientists-believe-global-warming-is-man-made/#comments
Richard S. Courtney laying down the law @ 150
Radiation Transmitted by the Atmosphere – graphic plot
stevengoddard.files
Another IPCC Prediction Failure: Infrared Radiation That Warms Earth Is Doing Opposite of Model Predictions
Read here. The essential foundation of the AGW hypothesis is that CO2 atmospheric increases block the escape of infrared radiation and increasingly bounces the infrared warming back to the Earth’s surface to warm it. But when examining the empirical evidence, the infrared radiation bouncing back to Earth is mostly decreasing, not increasing. This is a likely the explanation for the disappearing global warming over the last 15 years.
Simply put, this is the exact opposite of what IPCC climate models and its faux climate scientists predicted.
Researchers Gero and Turner, using highly accurate technology, measured the decreases of infrared radiation reaching the surface and contend the decrease is due to increased cloudiness over the site – that’s called a negative feedback, which Dr. Roy Spencer has presciently espoused.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/04/another-ipcc-prediction-failure-infrared-radiation-that-warms-earth-is-doing-opposite-of-model-predi.html
ARM
The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program
RHUBC-II
ARM/ASR’s Radiative Heating in Underexplored Bands Campaign
BBHRP
ARM’s Broadband Heating Rate Profile Project
Observed cirrus cloud radiative forcing on surface-level shortwave and longwave irradiances
J-C. Dupont, M. Haeffelin
Institut Pierre et Simon Laplace, Ecole Polytechnique, France
ARM meeting, 10-14 March 2008, Norfolk
Radiative Processes Working Group
WRMC-BSRN
World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC)
Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN)
Datasets from “Data”
Dataset sample from “LR 0100 + LR 0300 (Basic and other measurements)”
Data Description sample from “Long, C (2009): Basic measurements of radiation at station Darwin (2002-03)”
Radiation Panel
Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX)
World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
Darwinian Selection – “Back Radiation”
August 11, 2010 by scienceofdoom
Plots from BSRN Darwin data showing DLR (downward longwave radiation, aka “back radiation”)
The offending 1.7Wm2 from CO2 is in there somewhere. If someone could point it out to me, that would be much appreciated. See “A Null Hypothesis for CO2” http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/EE_21-4_paradigm_shift_output_limited_3_Mb.pdf#page=13
“A 1.7 W.m−2 increase in downward LWIR flux (+100 ppm CO2) increases peak summer temperature by 0.32 C and winter temperature by 0.34 C.
Maximum change occurs at night. Daytime increases are less, 0.14 and 0.17 C.”
Monday, October 18, 2010
The fallacy of the greenhouse effect
A recommended post from the planetary vision blog, The fallacy of the greenhouse effect, explains in simple terms why the conventional explanation of the “greenhouse effect” violates both the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics:
Wrong link – should be:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/10/fallacy-of-greenhouse-effect.html
Radiative Transfer Climate Models – Google Search
See – “CLIMATE MODEL PAPERS”
Radiative forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases:
Estimates from climate models in the IPCC AR4
Collins Et Al 2010
See – “Climate”
Clouds in Climate Models
Climate Audit – Search Results for: Cloud positive feedback
See – “Climate Model Papers”
Effects of bias in solar radiative transfer codes on global climate model simulations
Arking 2005
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Effects of bias in solar radiative transfer codes on global climate model simulations – Google Scholar Search
Note: this is a better search than:
radiative transfer codes global climate model simulations
and contains for example;
“An accurate parameterization of the infrared radiative properties of cirrus clouds for climate models” Yang 1998
Also see – “Clouds in Climate Models”
See – Climate Models
NON IPCC and Natural Forcings ONLY
Atmospheric & Environmental Research, Inc.’s (AER)
Radiative Transfer Working Group
The foundation of our research and model development is the validation of line-by-line radiative transfer calculations with accurate high-resolution measurements.
See “Climate Science”
Climate Models
NON IPCC and Natural Forcings ONLY
Cloud Resolving Model – Google Search
Cloud Resolving Model – Google Scholar Search
Hydrological Cycle: Evaporation and Water Vapour
Also see – Water Vapour
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/#comment-26341
A very interesting talk by Noor van Andel:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/02/the-oceans-clouds-and-cosmic-rays-drive-the-climate-not-co2/
Related paper:
http://climategate.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/CO2_and_climate_v3.pdf
Also, the “Lite” slideshow. Includes Miskolczi’s theorem.(unless someone disproves it).
http://climategate.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/KNMI_voordracht_VanAndel.pdf
The right physics in my opinion [Van Andel]:
We have a strongly controlled climate. The solar constant
and the physical properties of water keep us controlled.
• The heat transfer from surface into space uses two
mechanisms in series: Convection in the lower atmosphere, IR
radiation in the higher atmosphere.
• The warmer it becomes, going from pole to equator, the more
important the convection part becomes. The height on which
radiation flux becomes larger than convection flux, the
convection top, rises.
• More convection means a higher tropopause, a lower cloud top
temperature, a higher condensation efficiency, and in this way a
drier upper troposphere.
• These two effects: a higher convection top and a drier upper
troposphere, both increase Outgoing Longwave Radiation. This
controls the temperature.
Galactic cosmic rays change climate, like sulphuric acid, by increasing CCN [Cloud Condensation Nucleation) ,whiter and more clouds, smaller droplets, decreased precipitation efficiency
concluding:
• Rising Outgoing Long-wave radiation with more than 3.7 W/m^2
per ºC SST cannot be the effect of rising CO2 or of the increase of
other “greenhouse” gases. Rising OLR/SST with 8.6 W/m^2K means
that the atmosphere has become more transparent to IR radiation
in the past 60 years. The “greenhouse effect” has become less.
• Solar constant and the properties of water determine our climate
• Rising surface temperature is tightly controlled by increasing wet
convection and concomitant upper tropospheric drying
• No observational evidence for influence of CO2 on past or present
climate
• Strong observational correlation of solar magnetic activity with
climate temperatures, presumably via cloud condensation nucleation
and albedo
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
“Maximum ‘Residence Time’ of Atmospheric CO2″
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
To quote Cohenite at JoNova:
“Clearly the IPCC views about the long-life of ACO2 is an outlier”
The distinction between residence time and response time.
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/10/royal-society-humiliated/#comment-25801
See CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2) and Carbon
Wrong links:
See CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2) and CARBON
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Press Release 09-001
Scientists Take off on Historic Mission to Measure Greenhouse Gases That Have an Impact on Climate
HIAPER, one of the nation’s most advanced research aircraft, is scheduled to embark on an historic mission spanning the globe from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
Starting Jan. 7, 2009, the HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) mission will cover more than 24,000 miles as an international team of scientists makes a series of five flights over the next three years sampling the atmosphere in some of the most inaccessible regions of the world.
The goal of the mission is ambitious–the first-ever, global, real-time sampling of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases across a wide range of altitudes in the atmosphere, literally from pole-to-pole.
To date, much of our understanding of global atmospheric greenhouse gases has been acquired from ground-based observations, distant satellites, balloon launches, or highly sophisticated supercomputer models. HIAPER’s pole-to-pole mission will, for the first time, give scientists real-time global observation data to correlate with those climate models.
HIAPER is short for the National Science Foundation’s High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research. A modified Gulfstream V jet, it can fly at high altitudes for extended periods of time and can carry 5,600 pounds of sensing equipment, making it a premier aircraft for scientific discovery.
HIPPO is a joint project funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and involving researchers from Harvard University, NSF’s National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Wood for Trees: Interactive Graphs
Daily Earth Temperatures from Satellites
Global air and sea temperatures starting to drop rapidly
Posted on October 29, 2010 by Anthony Watts
Dr. Roy Spencer has an essay below on sea surface temperatures starting to bottom out, but in addition to that, the UAH daily lower troposphere plot shows a sharp drop also.
As this graph of UAH TLT from D Kelly O’Day’s site shows, The current global anomaly is 0.044C – or very nearly zero. That’s a big drop from last month when we ended up at 0.60C.
Air Pollution – Thread
Study Shows Half Of Warming Since 1980 Due To Clear Skies
By P Gosselin on 19. Dezember 2010
Spaceweather.com has an excellent report today called: ALL-CLEAR IN THE STRATOSPHERE about volcanic aerosols and their impact on the earth’s climate and cooling. Turns out that they have a far greater impact than expected.
Today the earth’s stratosphere is as clean as it’s been in more than 50 years. What does that mean? It means more solar radiation can reach the earth, and is thus contributing to warming. The stratosphere is too clean – because of the lack of volcanic activity over the last 18 years. According to climate scientist Richard Keen of the University of Colorado:
“Since 1996, lunar eclipses have been bright, which means the stratosphere is relatively clear of volcanic aerosols. This is the longest period with a clear stratosphere since before 1960.”
Continues………
Methane (CH4)
Atmospheric Absorption Bands – Plots Including Methane
UV – Visible Spectrum – Infra Red – Colour Coding
Precise – Grey Shading – Black and White
From “Musings from the Chiefio”
———————————————————————————————————————
#
on November 30, 2010 at 1:34 pm Adrian Vance
Methane is not a “greenhouse gas.” Consult any of the IR absorption charts and you will see this is another lie from the skunks in white coats who are eating Truffles in Barcelona, Caviar in Copenhagen and who knows what in Cancun.
This also tells us what fools we’ve been with our “Jockstraps in Space” programs going to the moon for a handful of granite chips and never rising higher than 1/4th inch on the scale of a one foot home globe in the “Space Shuttle” which is little more than a Magic Mountain thrill ride for simpletons in spacesuits. The story that one was drunk when he got on the craft had my sympathy as I would be too if I ever were put on that thing.
America deserves to fail as we demonized DDT and Freon(tm) when they were two of the finest industrial chemicals ever made, but Dupont was happy to see Rachal Carson, Molina and Rowland show up so they could patent new, inferior chemicals while 100 million people died the lingering death of Malaria and every kitchen has a time bomb in it with a refrigerator running with flammable gas in the cooling coils.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 5:20 pm Jason Calley
Adrian Vance says: “Consult any of the IR absorption charts and you will see this is another lie..”
I looked. I’ll be darned! Yes, the absorption bands for methane are up in the shorter wavelengths closer to the near IR, not down where IR radiation from the surface and/or atmosphere would be. I think you are correct — either that, or we are now both confused. 🙂
I’ve learned something! Thanks!
By the way, the wiki page for GHG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential cites the IPCC as reporting that methane is (short term) 72 times as potent a GHG as CO2. Of course, the IPCC would never publish anything misleading, would they? (sarcasm off)
#
on November 30, 2010 at 5:38 pm Sandy McClintock
“Livestock’s Long Shadow” was a UN report that pointed the finger at cows (and other farm animals) as producing ‘dangerous’ levels of methane. So if you are right about Methane NOT being a GHG, then this whole report is bogus.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 6:58 pm Peter Offenhartz
Adrian Vance and Jason Calley: Methane (CH4) has a set of exceedingly strong absorption lines centered on (roughly) 1305 cm-1 (8 microns). This is well within the earthglow spectral region; indeed, I think I recall that these lines are in the so-called long wavelength window, where the atmosphere is otherwise transparent, and which is responsible for much of the earth’s radiation. So, yes, methane (by the strength of its lines) is a powerful infrared absorber; its effect, of course, depends on its integrated absorbance, which is rather small because the lines are so narrow.
I won’t comment on the IPCC’s statement because I don’t know enough, but I have trouble believing that such narrow lines can have much effect on radiative heat transfer.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 7:31 pm Adrian Vance
The IR wavelength range thought to heat the atmosphere is between 0.7 microns and 15 microns. In that range methane has negligible absorption, that on the order of nitrogen a gas classified as “transparent” to atmospheric heating IR.
The “Greens” and grant sucking scientists have been very successful in demonizing carbon and dumbing down science education. Today at Stanford every physics lecture is preceded by a five to 15 minute presentation by an anthropogenic global warming propagandist.
I was in science education film and publishing for 30 years until I became persona non-grata because I wanted to out the “global warming” fraudsters. I had the proof, but they had the grants. Follow the money. These people have totally corrupted science education and two generations of scientists who are now defective.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 9:52 pm Adrian Vance
Methane has two absorption points at about 3.75 and 8 microns that are very peaked, but very thin and the areas under the curves are very small. That is the critical fact.
Methane also auto oxidizes, hence the glowing flashes of “swamp gas” and converts to CO2 and H2O vapor which are both far greater IR absorbers, especially water vapor, but it is already responsible for 99.8% of all atmospheric heating.
All of the panic pushing over methane, which now has 1.8 parts per million in air is nothing more than the demonization of carbon in search of something more to tax and a way to control the people. This is a total fraud and panic power politics.
#
on November 30, 2010 at 10:04 pm Peter Offenhartz
Adrian:
I am confused by your statement that absorption by methane is comparable to absorption by nitrogen. N2 is a molecule with zero dipole moment, regardless of vibrational state. Its absorption of infrared must therefore take place via a very inefficient mechanism (magnetic dipole?). While CH4 is a very very strong (electronic dipole) absorber. True, the concentrations of the two molecules differ by a factor circa 10^9, but is that enough to overcome the difference in quantum efficiency?
I am the original author of MOLSPEC, and I can still run calculations with variable concentrations of gas mixtures. So if you have a simulation that you would like me to run, let me know. But it is important to note that the concentration of N2 is pretty well fixed, while the concentration of CH4 (in principle) is variable. So increasing CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere can surely contribute to changes in atmospheric absorption of outbound radiation, and thus affect global energy balance.
#
on December 1, 2010 at 4:51 am Jason Calley
E.M., firstly, my apologies if I have inadvertently swerved the topic to absorption lines of methane instead of the truly noteworthy fact of upcoming Japanese production. I seem to remember that a new LNG production and shipping facility was announced a couple of years ago for the Bahamas. Maybe long term facility for clathrate sources?
Secondly, I do still wonder what is the deal with methane absorption lines — heck, I wonder what the deal is with ALL the discussed GHG lines. I have come to the point where any time someone implies that “the physics is simple” my hackles go up. the only simple physics I have ever seen is on blackboards, not in the real world.
Do we KNOW from actual experiment the absorptive and radiative of methane (or CO2) when mixed in the atmosphere? I do not want to be either an idiot or a pedant, but I am not asking “have we made computer models of methane” or even “have we measured pure samples of methane and can infer what a mixture with nitrogen and oxygen would do.” As I say, real physics is far too often not simple… Has someone taken air samples, added appropriate amounts of methane (or CO2) and accurately measured what happens when you put the samples out in the sunshine?
Pardon me if I am being stupid, but I have seen (on various topics) discussions that go on at great length, where all sides argue in good faith — and extraordinary depth! — but no one has done real experiments. Have we actually measured real atmospheric mixes of gases for real world responses?
#
on December 1, 2010 at 6:09 am Baa Humbug
Jason Calley, go here…………
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/hug-barrett.htm
scroll down to item 3.) Line broadening.
There you’ll find experiments of integrated line strengths of CO2 spectra firstly as pure CO2, then mixed with He then mixed with N2 plus more info including Fig. 2 “Optical density of methane at different pressures in the presence of foreign gases”, which may be of use to you.
regards
p.s. All the more interesting because you will also find an “Open Review” of the paper.
#
on December 1, 2010 at 8:06 am Adrian Vance
Nitrogen was not a good example, but it coincidentally has two very small absorption points where methane has two tall spikes, but very little area under the curves on the American Meteorlogical chart I am using. And, the two nitrogen absorption points are of much shorter wavelength, hence of much greater energy.
It is my understanding that perfectly symmetrical molecules, like O2 and N2 are not good IR absorbers where H2O is as it is not symmetrical. CH4 is symmetrical and CO2 is and not as one [O] is bonded to an “S” electron and can be all over the surface and in a resonant position only a fraction of the time.
Nonetheless, it is inescapable that methane is a very poor absorber compared to water vapor by a factor of 20 and not “a greater greenhouse gas by a factor of 20, 26, 90 or 300,” as claimed by the anthropogenic global warming panic pushers.
#
on December 1, 2010 at 8:14 am Adrian Vance
One of the great problems with discussing methane in the atmosphere is that is auto-oxidizes and especially well in sunlight. Thus, whatever quantity emerges from swamps or thawing tundra is quickly converted to carbon dioxide and water.
The present concentration of methane in air is 1.8 parts per million. It is so rare it is ridiculous to talk about it as a driver of anything. CO2 is now at about 390 ppm and still very much a trace and by definition insignificant, i.e. of no consequence. But…
Petroleum and coal that produce 80% of all energy are 84%+ carbon. The control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power than anything since the Magna Carta that transferred power from the Kings and Dukes to the people in 1215 AD. It is just that simple.
Global Warming Notes by Adrian Vance
adrianvance@dslextreme.com
Absorption Spectra
See plot: “ABSORPTION SPECTRA FOR THE MAJOR NATURAL GREENHOUSE GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE”
This is an official set of graphs from the American Meteorological Society. The vertical red lines were added to show infrared range normally considered in the analysis of atmospheric heating, “IR absorption.”
When the chart is analyzed in terms of the areas under the absorption curves we find that water vapor has 3.3 times the area of carbon dioxide, but it also absorbs more in the shorter wavelengths which are higher energy by:
E = (h X c)/w
Where E is energy in Joules, h is Planck’s constant, c is the speed of light, w is wavelength in micrometers, millionths of a meter. The net energy absorption is six times greater for water vapor than that seen for carbon dioxide per molecule and where water vapor has 200 times as many molecules as CO2 it has 1200 times the overall heating effect.
Note that methane and nitrous oxide which are often called “very powerful greenhouse gases” by alarmists are very poor absorbers of infrared as well as nearly nonexistant in the atmosphere.
Methane has 1.7 parts per million in the atmosphere or one in every 18,000 molecules in air is methane and it auto-oxidizes in sunlight so it has a very short lift expectancy in the very environment it is claimed to be harming. The problem with methane is that a little comes from cows and many greens are vegans who do not want anyone to eat meat, thus the methane myth.
When methane oxidizes in air, is becomes water vapor and CO2 and as such actually absorbs more heat energy from sunlight than it would as methane in yet another irony in this insane controversy.
In addition to the limited GHG effect of methane, we also have the inconvenient fact that levels are not increasing
From the IPCC itself, we have
Direct atmospheric measurements of the gas made at a wide variety of sites in both hemispheres over the last 25 years show that, although the abundance of CH4 has increased by about 30% during that time, its growth rate has decreased substantially from highs of greater than 1% yr–1 in the late 1 70s and early 1980s (Blake and Rowland, 1988) to lows of close to zero towards the end of the 1990s (Dlugokencky et al., 1998; Simpson et al., 2002). The slowdown in the growth rate began in the 1980s, decreasing from 14 ppb yr–1 (about 1% yr–1) in 1984 to close to zero during 1999 to 2005, for the network of surface sites maintained by NOAA/GMD
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-3-2.html
Remind me again, why is NZ the only country in the world proposing to tax farmers for methane emissions?
It is just unbelievable.
In addition, the graph on this page tells a tale about the methane issue
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-2-4.html
Level Of Important Greenhouse Gas Has Stopped Growing: Seven-Year Stabilization Of Methane May Slow Global Warming
ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2006) — Scientists at UC Irvine have determined that levels of atmospheric methane – an influential greenhouse gas – have stayed nearly flat for the past seven years, which follows a rise that spanned at least two decades.
This finding indicates that methane may no longer be as large a global warming threat as previously thought, and it provides evidence that methane levels can be controlled. Scientists also found that pulses of increased methane were paralleled by increases of ethane, a gas known to be emitted during fires. This is further indication that methane is formed during biomass burning, and that large-scale fires can be a big source of atmospheric methane.
Professors F. Sherwood Rowland and Donald R. Blake, along with researchers Isobel J. Simpson and Simone Meinardi, believe one reason for the slowdown in methane concentration growth may be leak-preventing repairs made to oil and gas lines and storage facilities, which can release methane into the atmosphere. Other reasons may include a slower growth or decrease in methane emissions from coal mining, rice paddies and natural gas production.
Continues………
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061120182053.htm
Paper here:-
Influence of biomass burning during recent fluctuations in the slow growth of global tropospheric methane
Simpson, Isobel J.; Rowland, F. Sherwood; Meinardi, Simone; Blake, Donald R.
Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 33, No. 22, L22808
10.1029/2006GL027330
23 November 2006
http://www.chem.uci.edu/rowlandblake/publications/2006GL027330%20Published.pdf
I actually posted on this topic in the last couple of days. The fact that methane levels have remained constant over the last 5 years or so is presented in IPCC AR4.
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/atmosphere/#comment-43604
The NZ government is spending millions fixing this “problem”
I saw your comment so went looking for the latest Baring Head measurements and came across that article
NIWA have a Dec 2009 article “NIWA says greenhouse gas methane is on the rise again”
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/niwa-sayes-greenhouse-gas-methane-is-on-the-rise-again
Although the graph does not necessarily indicate a continuation of the 2006-2008 rise (but it does correlate much better with global temperature than CO2)..
LIVESTOCK’S LONG SHADOW
environmental issues and options
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Rome, 2006
[Note: enter Methane in the pdf search box and click Find Next]
Screeds on emissions.
“Globally, livestock are the most important source of methane emissions”
“Livestock account for 35-40% of anthropogenic emissions”
Page 80
Anthropogenic climate change “well established fact”
And
“A part of the heat flow is absorbed by so-called greenhouse gases, trapping it in the atmosphere”.
Scepticism of AGW has no bearing unless backed by scientific rebuttal i.e. exposure of the fallacy of the AGW hypothesis.
The assertion that anthropogenic climate change (AGW – ACC) is a “well established fact” is exposed as unfounded by the rebuttal papers available.
One recent paper
“Falsi fication Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse E ffects Within The Frame Of Physics”
by physicists Gerlich and Tscheuschner (G&T 2009)
does just that several times over. Consequently it is hated and denigrated by AGW proponents with vehemence.
G&T is heavy going but I’ve found a synopsis (G&T “Lite”).
This is from “Solar Flux” by Joe Postma
———————————————————————————————————-
SUMMARY
1- The radiative surface of the earth is not the same thing as the ground surface of the earth. Therefore, comparing the actual ground-air temperature to the theoretical radiative equilibrium blackbody temperature is an invalid concept – there is no reason to do this from the outset. The theoretical radiative equilibrium temperature is measured to be exactly just that, on average, as seen from space.
2- The simple Ideal Gas Law, and the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, tell us that the atmospheric temperature increases with density in a gravitational field.
3- Given the dry adiabatic lapse rate is known from thermodynamics and meteorology, and the altitude of the radiative equilibrium temperature is known from measurement, the average ground surface air temperature is calculated to be +220C, via thermodynamics.
Therefore the real question and science is found in: How much does outgoing radiative transfer contribute to the height of the radiative equilibrium surface, thus contributing to warming of the ground-air due to thermodynamics? Then, how much is this height affected by CO2? Then, how much by anthropogenic CO2? Satellite-measured data has already answered the last question for us: It’s too little to matter! Thus the need for positive feedbacks (see last).
Additionally: The idea that the ground-air temperature is due exclusively to the mechanics of outgoing infrared radiative transfer is false. A significant portion of ground-air heating must be due to simple thermodynamics a-priori, because the majority of incoming solar energy is absorbed directly by the atmosphere, raising the radiative equilibrium surface far above the ground.
There is no such thing as an atmospheric Greenhouse Effect as popularly understood by the lay-public: the analogy was never valid to begin with. A horticulturalists’ greenhouse is warm because the glass prevents convective cooling of sunlight-heated air. It is not because the glass absorbs or traps infrared radiation. IR transparent glass could be used and a greenhouse will still be warm. Air actually conducts & convects heat away from sun-lit ground, acting rather as an air-conditioner. The sun-lit surface of the moon is after-all, with no atmosphere, hundreds of degrees hotter than the Stefan-Boltzmann equation would predict. This is because there is no atmosphere present to share the thermal load, distribute the heat, and convectively cool the lunar regolith. The atmospheric greenhouse analogy is invalid and misleading, and sidesteps true understanding based on well-accepted theory and physical principles. We need a better mnemonic than the one we have.
“The present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2, limits real understanding. So does the replacement of physical theory by model simulation”1 and simple-minded misleading mnemonics. Theory is further abused in the error of proposing that the ground-air temperature is determined exclusively by the amount of radiation in it, rather than the amount of radiation being determined by the temperature. Any stellar atmospherics astrophysicist knows that the amount of radiation in an atmosphere is determined by its temperature, not the other way around. If it was, then astrophysicists should concern themselves with the “Greenhouse Effect” in stars…They don’t.
Full paper here
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~jpostma/Solar_Flux.pdf
Livestock and Climate Change Policy in New Zealand
Hayden – Montgomery, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
New Zealand
New Zealand Pastural Farming Climate Research
New Zealand Pastural Farming Climate Research
http://www.farmcarbon.co.nz/
Promoting livestock methane emissions as sustainable and not responsible for global warming
About
Pastural Farming Climate Research Incorporated
OUR PURPOSE
* To promote livestock methane emissions as sustainable and not responsible for global warming.
* To study and comment on research by other organisations that relate to pastoral farming carbon emissions.
* To initiate an academic study to determine the net effect livestock have on the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and whether what ever effect they do have could cause global warming.
* To advocate fairness for agricultural producers under any carbon emission laws or regulations.
Pecuniary gain is not the purpose of the society.
I’ve left a comment and links to this methane thread and to all other CCG access under this post at Pastural Farming (farmcarbon.co.nz)
http://www.farmcarbon.co.nz/index.php/2010/11/methane-from-livestock-not-the-problem/
This post seems to sum-up Pastural Farming’s perspective
———————————————————————————————————————
Emission Factors
Written By: Robin Grieve
In just 6 weeks agriculture will start the voluntary reporting of the bullshit emissions as calculated using the science defying logic of the Ministry of Bullshit. This is a new ministry that encompasses the Ministry’s of Climate Change issues, Climate Change Negotiations, Environment and Agriculture. The Ministers of Bullshit are jointly, Nick Smith, Tim Grosser, Kate Wilkinson and the hapless David Carter. These people are well suited to the job.
Continues with emission factors (You’ve gotta see this) for:-
Cattle
Sheep
Deer
Other animals
Milk
Egg production
http://www.farmcarbon.co.nz/index.php/2010/11/emission-factors/
——————————————————————————————————————–
This maybe old news and exemptions now apply – dunno
See “ETS and carbon taxes”
“Farmers may win reprieve over ETS”
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/politics/ets-and-carbon-taxes-001/#comment-29519
Back to NZ for the serious stuff
By Fran O’Sullivan
Dec 23, 2009 – NZ Herald
New Zealand will be leading the way on tackling agriculture emission reduction, says Fran O’Sullivan.
Trade Minister Tim Groser deserves special mention for the way in which he has married NZ’s objectives on the trade and climate change front.
Groser’s brainchild – a global alliance to research ways of reducing agriculture emissions – has gained huge support from powerhouse countries like the US and India, supported by others like Denmark, Japan, Australia and Canada.
The launch of the alliance in Copenhagen last week was a bright spot in an otherwise spectacularly disastrous conference. Groser – who is a very adroit and experienced negotiator having led the agriculture committee negotiations at the World Trade Organisation – described the atmosphere at the conference as “madness”.
But irrespective of the flim-flam at Copenhagen, NZ is set to drive forward the global agenda to mitigate the effects of climate change.
In March, representatives from up to 30 nations that are signing up for the global alliance will come to New Zealand for a summit on agriculture emissions.
This is serious stuff.
Each country is expected to field at least two representatives who are likely to be a policy wonk and a scientist.
The alliance will develop new farming approaches and develop environmental technologies that reduce emissions from livestock, crops and rice production.
What’s notable is the big NZ financial contribution – some $45 million of the $150 million so far committed.
This might seem over the top. But with nearly 50 per cent of NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture it is important that action is taken to protect a sector which drives more than 35 per cent of our exports.
New Zealand’s leadership has been endorsed by other nations – like the US which has upped its agriculture emissions budget by US$90 ($128) million.
But it’s important to note this foreign policy initiative has not been universally acclaimed.
The US Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is concerned that research agenda will “simply duplicate the pitfalls we’ve seen within the US agriculture research agenda, which for example spends billions of dollars on genetically engineered seeds that largely benefit transnational corporations and can take a decade to develop”, said its president Jim Harkness.
“The loss of traditional knowledge and seed varieties in the Global South is a much more urgent crisis, and much more crippling to the world’s capacity to address climate change, than what has been the traditional US research model. Unfortunately, national research institutions have largely ignored the types of low-input, sustainable, small-scale systems that are needed for both food security and climate-friendly farming.”
Back home, Labour is still making a great deal out of the fact that National canned the previous Government’s $700 million Fast Forward fund over 10-15 years. At issue is whether the $45 million the Government is now putting into agriculture emissions reduction will be enough to offset prior Budget cuts and bolster research funding for the sector which underpins one of our prime export industries.
Putting that to one side, it’s fair to say NZ’s negotiators also survived the first hurdle at Copenhagen in their quest to get substantial changes to the rules relating to forestry, and the ability for New Zealand to offset greenhouse gas emissions outside our borders.
In NZ, it is important to get the existing Kyoto Protocol rules changed so this country is not overly penalised when forests are felled and replaced by trees planted elsewhere or when trees are converted to wood products such as timber and fibre board.
New Zealand is also seeking rule changes over land use and the international carbon market – which the Ministry for the Environment says are important because it will impact on New Zealand’s ability to meet its future target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft negotiating agreement contains clauses which give effect to the rules NZ wants. But they are not cast in concrete. The draft text has plenty of “square brackets” which indicate particular clauses are still disputed.
Groser and his fellow Cabinet Minister Nick Smith seem to have made the best out of the hand that was dealt to them at Copenhagen.
——————————————————————————————————————–
So that was COP15, what’s happened since re the $45 million.
Now we’re at COP16 and the Kyoto Protocol is back in the frame – right now!
Japan’s bailed, Canada and Russia are similarly unenthusiastic, so what’s New Zealand’s position?
GLOBAL RESEARCH ALLIANCE
ON AGRICULTURAL GREENHOUSE GASES
Global Research Alliance Secretariat
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington 6140
NEW ZEALAND
Research Groups
Paddy rice
Crops
Livestock
Livestock Research Group
The Livestock Research Group of the Alliance is focused on reducing greenhouse gas intensity and improving overall production efficiency of livestock systems.
The Group will work together to find ways to limit emissions of methane (CH4), emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and to increase the quantity of carbon (C) stored in those soils managed as part of a livestock production system. The Group will work to better quantify emissions from livestock systems so that national inventories are improved and farmers, land managers and policy makers around the world have an improved knowledge of the source and extent of emissions from different components of livestock systems. A further key activity of the Livestock Research Group will be transferring knowledge, practices and technologies to stakeholders such that research and development outputs result in beneficial greenhouse gas outcomes.
The partnership will address ruminants and non-ruminants livestock and the multiplicity of systems of production associated with these two principle livestock types.
Gas emissions to be studied for quantification and management are:
* CH4 emissions from waste management
* CH4 from enteric fermentation
* N2O emissions from fertilizers
* N2O emissions from animal wastes
* Increased soil C storage
* Other emissions of specific national interest produced as a result of the management of livestock for food production
The Livestock Research Group held its first meeting 8-9 October 2010 in Banff, Canada
The meeting was attended by 27 countries involved in the Alliance and the open session was attended by other interested parties.
For further information on this event see the Summary Meeting report, and presentations given during the Open Session.
Livestock Research Group Meeting
Banff Park Lodge, Banff, Canada
8-9 October 2010
Overview and Meeting Summary
BACKGROUND
The Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (‘the Alliance’) was launched in December 2009 and currently has 30 member countries.
The Livestock Research Group is one of three groups established under the Alliance at the inaugural Senior Officials Meeting held in New Zealand in April 2010. The other two Research Groups are ‘Croplands’ and ‘Paddy Rice’. That meeting also agreed that New Zealand and the Netherlands would jointly coordinate the Livestock Research Group. All 30 member countries are currently participating in the Livestock Research Group, along with six observers. For more information, please see http://www.globalresearchalliance.org/livestock-research-group.aspx.
LIVESTOCK RESEARCH GROUP MEETING
The first meeting of the Livestock Research Group was held in Banff, Canada from 8-9 October 2010, immediately following the international Greenhouse Gas and Animal Agriculture (GGAA) Conference from 3-7 October.
The meeting was held in two parts:
• An open session for GGAA conference delegates was held from 9am-12pm on Friday 8 October. This session provided an overview of the Alliance concept and an update on progress with its establishment since it was launched in December 2009, as well as the opportunity to discuss the development of the Livestock Research Group. Approximately 190 people attended. Presentations will be available from the Livestock area of the Alliance website.
• A closed session for Livestock Research Group representatives from Alliance countries then ran from 12pm Friday to 3pm Saturday.
Both sessions were co-chaired by New Zealand (Dr Harry Clark, New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre) and the Netherlands (Dr Martin Scholten, Wageningen UR) as the co-coordinating countries of the Livestock Research Group.
The two-day meeting achieved the following:
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• Briefing and update on progress with establishing the Alliance and its Livestock Research Group to a broad audience of GGAA delegates.
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• Development of a collective understanding of participating Alliance countries’ activities and priorities for livestock emissions research, and agreement that this information should be turned into a publication in the near future.
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• Agreement that in the short term, the Livestock Group should focus its attention on:
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– Further work to gather information from Alliance countries on their livestock emissions research activities.
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– Formation of an initial two sub-groups: Ruminants and Non-Ruminants.
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– Development of a set of topics/projects for immediate action by the sub-groups, focused initially on: facilitating data sharing; developing protocols and standardised methodologies and best practice guidelines for measurement techniques; preparing synthesis papers on growing areas of livestock emissions research.
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– Creation of an international database of researchers and other experts (including policy) in livestock emissions, building on the existing LEARN database maintained by New Zealand.
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– Encouragement of widespread discussions within countries on the Alliance and its Livestock Research Group to help improve public awareness of the initiative.
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The Livestock Group will meet again in a closed session in early 2011 as part of a wider Alliance Senior Officials Meeting, and will report back to Alliance Ministers at a Summit in mid-2011.
For more information or to find out who your in-country Alliance Livestock Group representative is, please contact the Secretariat (secretariat@globalresearchalliance.org) or visit http://www.globalresearchalliance.org.
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And all under the assumption of AGW
Have made this inquiry to the Global Research Alliance Secretariat
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The Secretary,
I’m interested in the NZ research activities in respect to the $45m pledged at COP15.
Is there a budget available for this showing research allocations and spending including travel etc that have been made to date?
If so, may I have a report sent?
Thanks and regards
Richard Cumming
Response from the Alliance contact Laura.Hogg (Laura.Hogg@maf.govt.nz)
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Hi Richard,
Thanks for your enquiry. I work in the Alliance Secretariat here at the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. New Zealand’s investment in the
Global Research Alliance is a matter for domestic processes at the
moment, therefore we are not in a position to make information available
about particular allocations or other expenditure.
We are always welcoming of interest in the Alliance. It would be great
to know a little more of your background?
Many thanks, Laura
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My reply to Laura
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Laura,
Thanks for the response. When do you think the information will become available?
“We are always welcoming of interest in the Alliance. It would be great
to know a little more of your background?”
My background is energy (Int NZCE Mech) and economics (NZ Dip Bus) but am not working in either at the moment unfortunately so am keeping my hand in by studying climate science and all the ramifications of carbon emission mitigation measures.
I have a handle on the economic costs of carbon emissions mitigation and the impacts on the various sectors and agriculture is just one of those. Scrutiny of the scientific basis for these costs and impacts reveals that they are unnecessary.
From the physics and thermodynamics point of view, I have a particular interest in radiation transfer and how that is implemented in global climate models (GCMs). I’m in a position therefore to dispute the AGW assumption that animal emissions mitigation research is based on i.e. I’m of the opinion that research would be better directed at the heating effects and radiative properties of GHGs in the atmosphere rather than towards animal emissions which seems to me to be cart-before-the-horse.
For methane (or CO2) to be a problem it must be proved firstly that:-
1) Methane occupies a place on the atmospheric absorption spectrum that intercepts amounts of out-going radiation sufficient to create heating and how much of that is of anthropogenic origin?
2) Methane that does absorb out-going radiation has a significant heating effect in itself and compared to the heating and cooling effect of water vapour.
3) Methane molecules are of sufficient number in the atmosphere to be worthy of consideration in themselves and compared to water vapour.
4) Methane heat produced as a result of out-going radiation absorption as quantified by measurement is abnormal and directly correlated and attributable to anthropogenic emissions.
5) Methane absorption of out-going long-wave (OLR – LWIR) radiation over-rides in-coming short-wave solar radiation (SWIR) on balance.
The same conditions are applicable to CO2.
I also monitor as many metrics as possible (air, ocean, temp, heat etc) and note that the GHG correlations with warming have been broken over the last decade.
Given the above, the NZ ETS and animal emissions research is based on faulty IPCC science. As you can see from my 5 points, the issue starts with just one CO2 or CH4 molecule and what happens to it at altitudes 0 to Top of Atmosphere (TOA) when radiation strikes and not in the stomach of a sheep.
So it is of great interest to me to know where NZs $45m pledge is actually being spent and also where the total $150m pledge is actually being spent when I can prove that it is being mis-spent in the first place. The issue is also topical with COP16 underway and Japan, Canada and Russia bailing out of the Kyoto Protocol.
I hope this is what you mean by “background”
Cheers
Richard
Have added this
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Oops
“I also monitor as many metrics as possible (air, ocean, temp, heat
etc) and note that the GHG correlations with warming have been broken
over the last decade.”
I should say that CH4 has an atmospheric temp correlation (but not ocean heat) over the last decade that CO2 does not. Whether there’s a long-term correlation I don’t know (there isn’t in the case of CO2).
Received this reply.
Note that there has been no answer yet to this question
“When do you think the information will become available?”
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Thank you Richard, that’s a comprehensive background.
Regards, Laura
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So I’m no wiser as to the research allocation and spending so far of the $45m.
Except that in showing my colours I may have been shut out due to MAF’s adherence to the AGW consensus.
I doubt there will be anything more forthcoming from Laura but you never know, that may have just been a quick reply and she’s now drafting something up – here’s hoping.
3 points from looking at methane.
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1) Is a CH4 molecule completely transparent to solar SW radiation?
i.e. Does the in-coming radiation pass through the molecule unhindered (no reflection, no scattering, no absorption/re-emittance)?
It must be largely transparent going by this plot
http://johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Atmospheric_Transmission.129223740.png
Except for a very small area. Which makes my condition 5) above look silly depending on whether the small amount of excitation raises molecule temperature (heating)
The same can be said for CO2 but the absorption below 5 micro metres is perhaps a little more in proportion to methane.
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2) Over the last decade, methane levels (ppb) have plateaued and even correlate with temp a little (far better than CO2) although again there’s no correlation prior to the 70s.
Baring Head CH4
http://indymedia.org.au/files/Baring_Head_records_atmospheric_methane.png
NZ Ministry for the Environment (NIWA – Baring Head CO2 CH4)
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/environmental-reporting/atmosphere/greenhouse-gases/atmospheric-levels.html
Global tropospheric methane
http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/methaneatmos.php
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3) If CH4 levels have plateaued, there’s no reason to be concerned with it.
From CO2 Science
“we feel confident in suggesting that if the recent pause in CH4 increase is indeed temporary, it will likely be followed by a decrease in CH4 concentration, since that would be the next logical step in the observed progression from significant, to much smaller to no yearly CH4 increase.”
“So what has been responsible for the recent dramatic slowdown — and possible ultimate cessation — of the post-Little Ice Age upward trend in the air’s CH4 concentration? We believe that some significant portion of the welcome development can be attributed to the cumulative effect of a number of indirect impacts of the concomitant increase in the air’s CO2 concentration, as described in several of our Subject Index Summaries”
See Subject Index Summaries links on source page.
“Other phenomena are undoubtedly helping to reduce the air’s methane concentration as well; and it will be exciting to see, in the days and years ahead, if their combined influence will actually lead to a sustained downward trend in the concentration of this important greenhouse gas. Such a result would be like having one’s cake and eating it too; for it would enable the planet to reap the great biological benefits that come from atmospheric CO2 enrichment without creating a significant net increase in the atmosphere’s greenhouse effect.”
http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/methaneatmos.php
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Methane is not a problem
Scientists Rail Against Senator Who Belittled Research
Dec. 23, 2010 – abcNEWS
A team of scientists who study pollution’s role in global warming are outraged at a GOP Senator who, they say, has maligned their work as wasteful and petty by describing it as a study of “cow burps.”
“This was not funded with earmarks and it was not a study about cow burps,” said John Aber, an environmental scientist and provost of the University of New Hampshire.
“It’s not wasteful,” he said. “It’s important.”
Sen. Tom Coburn, R- Okla., released on Monday his annual “Wastebook” report, a look at 100 projects that received federal funding which, he says, contributed to record deficits in the past year.
Among those projects was a $700,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture to a team of environmental scientists at the University of New Hampshire to study greenhouse gas emissions – the chemicals associated with global warming – in the dairy industry.
Coburn’s “Wastebook” quotes one of the project’s researchers telling a local New Hampshire paper that “cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence.”
Continues………
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This research is a result of the GLOBAL RESEARCH ALLIANCE formed at COP15 that NZ is a partner to (and administrator).
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/atmosphere/#comment-31573
So it’s a burp tax – not a fart tax.
See “New Zealand ETS Dairy Costs” thread
Ruminant Methane Measurement Centre Opened
Tuesday, 22 February 2011, 10:31 am
Press Release: NZRMMC
22 February 2011
The New Zealand Ruminant Methane Measurement Centre (NZRMMC) was officially opened today by the Hon. David Carter, Minister of Agriculture. The NZRMMC is the largest purpose built facility of its kind in the world and provides New Zealand scientists with an enviable opportunity to accurately measure methane emissions from more than 25 ruminant animals at the same time.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1102/S00065/ruminant-methane-measurement-centre-opened.htm
link to a paper by Dr. Timo Niroma, a respected Finnish climatologist who has linked solar activity with temperature in many papers
PDF av here
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/d31643021826h6x6/
abstract
The quiet Sun of the Maunder Minimum in the latter part of the 1600’s is compared to the hyper-active Sun in the 1900’s. Solar influence upon Earth’s climate in these times of very different sunspot abundance is investigated. A second thread in this study is the possible influence of Jupiter in the observed variability of solar behaviour. Thirdly, is an analysis of the solar condition right now (late 2008) and its possible implications for climate on Earth; including what might be ahead. Last is a critical examination of IPCC’s hypothesis that changing atmospheric CO2 concentration is the dominant contributor to changing climate.
RSS data: 2010 not the warmest year in satellite record, but a close second
Posted on January 3, 2011 by Anthony Watts
The RSS data for Dec 2010 is out and available here, and I’m second in publishing it. The honor for being first goes to Lucia at the Blackboard here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
UAH Global Temperature anomaly published, 1998 still warmest year in the UAH satellite record
WHO WINS THE RACE FOR WARMEST YEAR?
As far as the race for warmest year goes, 1998 (+0.424 deg. C) barely edged out 2010 (+0.411 deg. C), but the difference (0.01 deg. C) is nowhere near statistically significant. So feel free to use or misuse those statistics to your heart’s content.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/03/uah-global-temperature-anomaly-published-1998-still-warmest-year-in-the-uah-satellite-record/#more-30860
A fistful of dust
Jan 6th 2011 – The Economist
The true effect of windblown material is only now coming to be appreciated
ON MAY 26th 2008 Germany turned red. The winds of change, though, were meteorological, not political. Unusual weather brought iron-rich dust from Africa to Europe, not only altering the colour of roofs and cars on the continent but also, according to recent calculations by Max Bangert, a graduate student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, making the place about a quarter of a degree colder for as long as the dust stayed in the air.
Unusual for Germany; commonplace for the planet as a whole. The Sahara and other bone-dry places continually send dust up into the atmosphere, where it may travel thousands of kilometres and influence regional weather, the global climate and even the growth of forests halfway around the planet………continues
Found this fascinating blog that postulates there is no greenhouse effect and then proves it using Venus’ atmosphere and looking at temperatures at the same pressure in both atmospheres. By correcting for the extra solar radiation that Venus receives, and the increased black body radiation from its higher temperature, he calculates the expected temperature on Venus. The two match remarkably well for a number of different pressures. I can’t fault his physics.
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
I’m not sure where to put this but here it is… [Thanks, Quentin. Atmosphere seems the right place. – Richard T]
Nature’s continued supply of atmospheric CO2 in LARGE qty
MANILA – PHILIPPINE authorities said on Sunday more people had been evacuated from towns and villages near a volcanic island close to the capital amid increasing signs of seismic activity. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said the number evacuated had increased to 1,375 as of Saturday from four towns near Taal volcano, while seismologists recorded 10 volcanic earthquakes overnight. Water temperatures and gas emissions also increased, seismologists said. ‘This large rise in CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration indicates gas release from the magma at depth,’ the council said.
NOTE LARGE RISE in CO2!! And this is a tom tiddler so far!
The increased levels of CO2 are measured in the vicinity of the volcano and it’s reasonable they should rise. “Normal” annual volcanic emissions seem to be about a few percent of humanity’s annual emissions. But I’m open to correction.
Searching for evidence of the contribution to global CO2 levels from volcanic activity, I have discovered that a) it seems low; b) the emissions are difficult to observe and measure; and c) the available figures are of low reliability.
I don’t have emission figures for specific large eruptions.
I’m wondering if someone can help me. I know the temperature of the troposphere is measured using radiosondes & satellites, but how do they measure the temperature of the stratosphere, by the same methods?
The reason I’m asking is that AGW proponents always say that the temperature readings for the troposphere are uncertain due to problems in the way the data is gathered, yet then quickly move on to say it’s irrelevant (cough, cough, bs) as the stratosphere is cooling & shrinking. I know the strat has to be cooling whilst the tropo is warming simultaneously to prove AGW, but if the means of measuring one is ok why is that same means not ok for the other (assuming that it is measured that way of course)?
AGC, don’t know for sure but “by the same methods” is probable.
On the AMSU–A site weather balloons are shown at 30km/10hPa (stratosphere)
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html
Soloman et al says this under Fig 1:-
(C) 10°N to 10°S monthly average anomalies of temperatures and water vapor relative to the period from 1993 to 2006. 100-hPa monthly averaged temperature anomalies are taken from the Japanese Reanalysis
And:-
Representative uncertainties are given by the colored bars; for the satellite data sets, these show the precision as indicated by the monthly standard deviations, while for the balloon data set this is the estimated uncertainty provided in the Boulder data files.
http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/library/Solomon,%20S_3734D5B7d01.pdf
The 100hPa (tropopause – top of trop, bottom of strat) temperature uncertainty range is 2C but hard to see cooling, warming or anything else although it is the zone above that and below the mesosphere that you are interested in.
Tropopause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropopause
I cannot see a reference to “the Japanese Reanalysis”. That reanalysis would give you the data sources that would include satellite and balloon I would think – just as with troposphere.
The first sentence of Solomon et al states: “Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000” and (same paragraph): “These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change”
And on the same page: “….even up-to-date stratospheric chemistry-climate models do not consistently reproduce tropical tropopause minimum temperatures (10) or recently observed changes in stratospheric water vapor (11)” and “Increases in stratospheric water vapor act to cool the stratosphere but to warm the troposphere, whereas the reverse is true for stratospheric water vapor decreases”
Then (page 4): “Figure 3 thus shows that the decline in stratospheric water vapor after 2000 should be expected to have significantly contributed to the flattening of the global warming trend in the past decade, and stratospheric water increases may also have acted to steepen the observed warming trend in the 1990s”.
Therefore, to say as in your comment “the stratosphere is cooling” is inconsistent with water vapour decline according to Soloman. I suggest that you ask that they cite observed (not modeled) data since 2000 (beware of “the long-term trend”) to support their claim and if it’s a reanalysis, get a reference to it and check it out because there has been questions over some reanalysis sets recently after V&V checks (get back to me if you get stuck).
Cheers Richard.
Haven’t been able to find a contiguous time series plot yet at e.g. Climate4you or JunkScience but there is this page at NOAA:-
The CPC global temperature analyses derived each day at 8 stratospheric levels (note “analysis” – not observations)
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/
You can only get plots for two years at a time and there’s no global average but you can do comparisons of say mid-strat 30mb/hPa and 10mb/hPa of e.g. tropical stratosphere 25N – 25S 2010 & 2011 vs 1979 &1980, 1999 & 2000 etc.
Interesting too to see how the 2yr mean fits with climate max, climate min and climate mean but note carefully that the climate changes from 79-04 (1979-2006) to 79-06 (2007) to 79-07 (2009) to 79-08 (2010).
Looking at 30hPa 25N – 25S and bringing up 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2010 in tabs across the browser it’s hard to discern any trend one way or another, they’re all around -57ish on average except 2001 at -59 and that was at 79-04 climate minimum note. You could look at all 11 plots for 2000 – 2010 to check.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/archive/30mb2525_2000.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/archive/30mb2525_2005.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/archive/30mb2525_2009.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/30mb2525.gif (2010)
I’m sure there is a contiguous plot or data for 2000 -2010 somewhere probably at one of the reanalysis sites but this is all I can do for now.
Here ’tis:-
An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends
Summary and Conclusions
[56] Since the previous major assessment of stratospheric
temperature trends [Ramaswamy et al., 2001], understanding of stratospheric climate change has increased for several reasons: (1) there is improved knowledge regarding the uncertainties inherent in both remotely sensed and radiosonde data at stratospheric levels; (2) there are several independent analyses of satellite and radiosonde data sets, with distinct homogeneity adjustments; and (3) the length of
the data records has increased with the passing of time. As a result, we now have increased confidence in our understanding of the latitudinal structure and the magnitude of trends in the lower stratosphere. However, we also acknowledge that there are substantial uncertainties in quantifying trends in the middle and upper stratosphere, as they are derived primarily from a single analysis of one data set (SSU data).
http://arlsun.arlhq.noaa.gov/documents/JournalPDFs/RandelEtal.JGR2009.pdf
Lots about “the long-term trend” since 1979 but a look at Figures 4, 10, 14, 17 and 18 shows that there’s been no recent trend from the mid 1990s and that the cooling occurred prior to that. This is consistent with Solomon et al.
Clouds working to cool Earth
link
Research from The University of Auckland on changes in cloud height in the decade to 2010 has provided the first hint of a cooling mechanism that may be in play in the Earth’s climate.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the analysis of the first ten years of data from the NASA Terra satellite revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around 1 per cent over the decade, or around 30 to 40 metres. Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.
Spencer’s cloud hypothesis independently confirmed:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/spencers-cloud-hypothesis-confirmed/
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
Just a snippet I found on the NASA website
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/pdo/
Interesting that one of the major drivers if internal variability of our climate system (PDO) was not actually named until 1996
Which, funnily enough, is about two years before “The Pause” (drum roll please)