Posted on 05/15/2003 9:11:40 AM PDT by cogitator
Comparing satellite & balloon climate data corroborates slower rate of global warming
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (May 1, 2003) -- A detailed comparison of atmospheric temperature data gathered by satellites with widely-used data gathered by weather balloons corroborates both the accuracy of the satellite data and the rate of global warming seen in that data.
Using NOAA satellite readings of temperatures in the lower atmosphere, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) produced a dataset that shows global atmospheric warming at the rate of about 0.07 degrees C (about 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since November 1978.
"That works out to a global warming trend of about one and a quarter degrees Fahrenheit over 100 years," said Dr. John Christy, who compiled the comparison data. "That's a definite warming trend, which is probably due in part to human influences. But it's substantially less than the warming forecast by most climate models, and it isn't entirely out of the range of climate change we might expect from natural causes.
The UAH team's research is published in the May 2003 edition of the American Meteorological Society's "Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology."
"We know the climate is changing," said Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "Earth's climate has never been stable. What we don't know is the rate of natural climate change, which makes it really tough to say how much of the warming that we see might be due to things like adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere."
The study published in the JAOT describes an updated global temperature dataset using NOAA satellite measurements of the atmosphere's microwave emissions, which change with the temperature. In this new version, the UAH team applied a more accurate accounting for temperature changes caused by the satellites' east-west drift.
To test the accuracy of the new dataset, Christy and his colleagues used independent data from 28 radiosonde weather balloon sites in an area bounded by eastern Canada, the Caribbean, Alaska and the Marshall Islands in the Western Pacific. They also used American, British and Russian composite datasets of hundreds of weather balloon sites around the world.
They used balloon data to test the satellite readings because balloon-borne thermometers and satellites both measure temperatures in deep layers of the atmosphere - comparing apples to apples.
"There is a 94 to 98 percent correlation between the satellite data and the different balloon datasets," said Christy. "The more difficult statistic to measure, the overall trend in the lower troposphere, agreed so well it was difficult to estimate the error bars."
Ultimately, the team calculated a 95 percent confidence in the satellite-based temperature trend within plus or minus 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade.
If the satellite data are reliable and accurate over the wide range of environments and climates represented by the balloon weather stations, Christy said, it is likely to be reliable over the rest of the globe.
Many climate models forecast that global warming should be happening at a rate much faster than that seen by either the UAH satellite dataset or the weather balloon data.
"But models don't provide scientific measurements," Christy said. "Climate models can be valuable for many scientific purposes, but models and their output shouldn't be confused with data or used as a standard for validating real data.
"If you have reliable data that disagree with a computer model, it's time to find out what's wrong with the model. To do anything else might lead you to conclude that your theories are correct and the real world is wrong."
1.25 degrees F = 0.75 degrees C.
From the Climate Change 2001, Working Group I: The Scientific Basis 9.2.2.4 Uncertainty):
Missing or misrepresented physics: No attempt has been made to quantify the uncertainty in model projections of climate change due to missing or misrepresented physics. Current models attempt to include the dominant physical processes that govern the behavior and the response of the climate system to specified forcing scenarios. Studies of "missing" processes are often carried out, for instance of the effect of aerosols on cloud lifetimes, but until the results are well-founded, of appreciable magnitude, and robust in a range of models, they are considered to be studies of sensitivity rather than projections of climate change. Physical processes which are misrepresented in one or more, but not all, models will give rise to differences which will be reflected in the ensemble standard deviation.
So, the physics (and probably the chemistry) of these models is wrong (or at least incomplete) but that's no big deal to those who use them.
I've downloaded the current climate model software used by these folks (CAM2) and, as soon as my Beowulf cluster is up and running, intentd to investigate the sensitivity of model predictions to the uncertainties in their underlying representation of the physics (and chemistry) involved.
Actually, we might. For a long time, this group's data had been showing a negligible warming signal. Now it's not negligible, and Christy -- a noted skeptic on the global warming issue with excellent scientific credentials -- is noting that there is a probably human influence. So this might be noteworthy to the liberal media. We'll see.
I don't get why it matters human or not. The much bigger question is if this is a good thing or bad thing. At this slow rate a warming should be a net good thing for the next 400 years, creating more food and less deaths from cold. We really don't need to worry about 400 years from now since there won't be any oil left to burn. We'll be on fusion by then and will be able to set the worlds temperature at anything we want. They are going to have a good laugh at all our worry 400 years from now.
Any input = global warming.
BTW:Where'd you find the software. I've been looking for something to run on my Beowulf Jr.;-)
Even if we assume that the thesis is correct that this miniscule trend is "probably due in part to human influences" (a thesis which I personally am not ready to grant yet), then the relevant question is HOW MUCH of it is due to human influences. 90 percent? 50 percent? 2.1 percent? If the answer is closest to the last, then anything we could possibly do would have such a negligible influence on temperature change that it wouldn't justify spending even one more cent to address the issue.
then the relevant question is HOW MUCH of it is due to human influences.
Mankind's impact is only 0.28% of Total Greenhouse effect
" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street JournalAnthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)
Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics % of All Greenhouse Gases % Natural
% Man-made
Water vapor 95.000% 94.999%
0.001% Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 3.618% 3.502%
0.117% Methane (CH4) 0.360% 0.294%
0.066% Nitrous Oxide (N2O) 0.950% 0.903%
0.047% Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.) 0.072% 0.025%
0.047% Total 100.00% 99.72
0.28%
2) Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming Potentials (updated April, 2002)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency3) Warming Potentials of Halocarbons and Greenhouses Gases
Chemical formulae and global warming potentials from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 119 and 121. Production and sales of CFC's and other chemicals from International Trade Commission, Synthetic Organic Chemicals: United States Production and Sales, 1994 (Washington, DC, 1995). TRI emissions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1994 Toxics Release Inventory: Public Data Release, EPA-745-R-94-001 (Washington, DC, June 1996), p. 73. Estimated 1994 U.S. emissions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, 1990-1994, EPA-230-R-96-006 (Washington, DC, November 1995), pp. 37-40.
About the only thing really known is that there would be more violent storms (more energy in the atmosphere.)
Seems as though there is room for substantial doubt as to any negative effect human created CO2, Methane etc. may have on our Climate future.
At least these folks believe so:
Petition Project: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm
During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.
Specifically declaring:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate.
Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth's plant and animal life.
Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields.
That's the key question researchers should find out. Spending billions trying to detect a tiny change is not useful. Determining the optimum temperature and technologies to get there should be the focus. I suspect our policies should be to promote C02 generation, for now anyway, rather than spending limited resources to decrease it. CO2 is plant food and warm weather kills far less people than cold. More weather energy results in more hydroelectric power, more wind power, and more fresh water.
You might also want to mention to him that the data from this group had been promoted by greenhouse-warming skeptics for years as showing virtually no warming trend in the troposphere, and with a few adjustments and corrections, it is now showing a definite warming trend in the troposphere. So this data can be used by both groups, as in "it's not warming very much" vs. "it's warming a lot more than they said two years ago".
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