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I love the smell of peer-review in the morning.

I have noted for years that it is hotter in the summer than it is in the winter. How do we explain that?

So who was funding the Kung Fu research?

Sounds suspect to me.

After applying some compensating factors

I looked at Herbert Hoover's administration, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill and a few other factors, and I came to the conclusion that between 1929 and 1934 (and possibly for anumber of years beyond that) the US would see the strongest economy in its history.

Unfortunately, the data at my disposal did not seem to correspond with my theory. But Voila! I applied some compansating factors, and I can now say that the Great Depression was the time at which the wealth and economic power of the US grew the fastest!!!

HOLD EVERYTHING...

I have figured out what this global warming thing is all about...

a) Scientists have become too plentiful...like lawyers. Surplus lawyers chase ambulances, surplus scientists chase global warming;

b) These "surplus" scientists are in a quandry about WHO will be the first to accurately forcast...doomsday. [Sorry, the Bible already did that].

c) THESE SURPLUS SCIENTISTS WILL HAVE TO GIVE UP THEIR MEATY GOVERNMENT GRANTS if they can't produce SOMETHING!!!!

d) they were ignored as children...

"I think what bothers me at this point is the lack of attention given to all of the work we did in the early 1990s recognizing that methods such as Fu's were inappropriate," Christy continued. "Everyone knows there is stratospheric influence in channel two, but Fu makes it out as if he discovered this. Our method works, and has also been verified in a large number of published papers by investigators independent of ourselves."

[...] "This kind of mistake would not get published with adequate peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication," said Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at UAH on his climate change Web site. "But in recent years, a curious thing has happened. The popular science magazines, Science and Nature, have seemingly stopped sending John Christy and me papers whose conclusions differ from our satellite data analysis. This is in spite of the fact that we are (arguably) the most qualified people in the field to review them."

Eco-kooks cooking the books. What else is new?

I love the smell of peer-review in the morning.

Smells something like burnt cowhide, when the rebuttal starts in.

Synopsis of John Christy's comments regarding the the Fu et.al. Nature article,

http://www.techcentralstation.com/050504H.html

When Is Global Warming Really a Cooling?

By Roy Spencer

Published

05/05/2004

Much media attention is focusing on the forthcoming big-budget climate disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" and how much scrutiny the "science" on which it is based deserves. But there are some developments in the world of serious climate science that certainly deserve greater scrutiny.

A new paper¹appearing today in the journal Nature purports to solve the long standing "problem" of the satellite-based global temperature record not showing much warming over the last 25 years (only +0.085 deg C/decade -- about a third of what is expected from climate models for the troposphere). Instead, all it does is help answer the question: "is the quality of peer review in the popular science journals getting worse?" (The answer is "yes.")

By way of background, the Microwave Sounding Units (MSU) on the NOAA polar orbiting satellites measure deep layers of the atmosphere, with each instrument channel measuring the average temperature of a different layer (see Fig. 1). John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and I discovered in 1990 that these instruments were so stable in their calibration that we have been using them ever since for climate monitoring of tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperatures since the satellite record began in 1978.

The lowest layer (the troposphere) is measured by channel 2, and this is where global warming is supposed to occur. The lower stratospheric layer is measured by MSU channel 4. Christy and I have measured substantial cooling (-0.47 deg. C/decade) in this layer over the same 25 year period.

But because the layers measured by the satellite are so thick, there is a intermingling of the warming and cooling signals. This means that warming in the tropospheric channel would be partly cancelled by stratospheric cooling occurring in the upper portion of this layer. Because of this problem, we devised a lower tropospheric retrieval² based upon different Earth viewing angles from the MSU tropospheric channel. As can be seen in the accompanying figure, this removes the stratospheric influence and so allows us to monitor the lower and middle troposphere for signs of global warming.

Fig. 1 Microwave Sounding Unit weighting functions for channels 2 and 4, along with derived weighting functions meant to remove the influence of lower stratospheric cooling on MSU channel 2 by Spencer & Christy (1992, "TLT") and Fu et al. (2004). The Fu et al. weighting function shows substantial negative weight above 100 hPa, a pressure altitude above which strong cooling has been observed by weather balloon data. This leads to a misinterpretation of stratospheric cooling as tropospheric warming.

Enter the new Nature study. The authors, noticing that channel 4 measures the extreme upper portion of the layer that channel 2 measures (see Fig. 1), decided to use the MSU channel 4 to remove the stratospheric influence on MSU channel 2. At first, this sounds like a reasonable approach. We also tried this thirteen years ago. But we quickly realized that in order for two channels to be combined in a physically meaningful way, they must have a large percentage of overlap. As can be seen in Fig. 1, there is very little overlap between these two channels. When a weighted difference is computed between the two channels in an attempt to measure just the tropospheric temperature, an unavoidable problem surfaces: a large amount of negative weight appears in the stratosphere. What this means physically is that any attempt to correct the tropospheric channel in this fashion leads to a misinterpretation of stratospheric cooling as tropospheric warming. It would be possible for their method to work (through serendipity) if the temperature trends from the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere were constant with height, but they are not. In this instance, the negative (shaded) area for the Fu et al. weighting function in Fig. 1 would be cancelled out by its positive area above about 200 millibars. Unfortunately, weather balloon evidence suggests the trends change from warming to strong cooling over this altitude range.

This kind of mistake would not get published with adequate peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication. But in recent years, a curious thing has happened. The popular science magazines, Science and Nature, have seemingly stopped sending John Christy and me papers whose conclusions differ from our satellite data analysis. This is in spite of the fact that we are (arguably) the most qualified people in the field to review them. This is the second time in nine months that these journals have let papers be published in the satellite temperature monitoring field that had easily identifiable errors in their methodology.

I will admit to being uneasy about airing scientific dirty laundry in an op-ed. But as long as these popular science journals insist on putting news value ahead of science, then I have little choice. The damage has already been done. A paper claiming to falsify our satellite temperature record has been published in the "peer reviewed" literature, and the resulting news reports will never be taken back. This is one reason increasing numbers of scientists regard Science and Nature as "gray" scientific literature.

1. Fu, Q., C.M. Johanson, S.G. Warren, and D.J. Seidel, 2004: Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, 429, 55-58.

2. Spencer, R.W., and J.R. Christy, 1992: Precision and radiosonde validation of satellite gridpoint temperature anomalies, Part II: A tropospheric retrieval and trends during 1979-90. J. Climate, 5, 858-866.

And of course, Patrick Michael's Greening Earth Society ways in with more detail on the problems with Fu et.al.:

http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/wca/2004/wca_17a.html

Assault From Above

It’s common knowledge that for twenty-five years the satellite-based temperature record of the lower atmosphere shows much less warming than surface observations or climate model predictions. The big question is, “Why?” A new study in Nature by University of Washington’s Qiang Fu and colleagues claims the satellite measurements are in error because they include a cooling effect from the atmospheric layer just above it. But in formulating their case, the authors assume the impossible.
     The idea behind what Fu et al. report to Nature is simple enough. Satellite-based temperature measurements of the earth’s atmosphere are not collected from a single altitude. They represent the weighted average temperature of a rather large atmospheric layer, one so large that the measurements supposedly representing the middle to upper troposphere (from about five to eight miles in altitude) actually include part of the lower stratosphere (from about eight to twelve miles up), as Figure 1 shows. The extra few miles potentially are problematic because ozone loss in the stratosphere leads to a cooling trend in that layer.
     By way of background, ozone absorbs incoming solar radiation. The radiation warms the air, meaning the less ozone there is, the less warming there can be. The stratosphere’s cooling trend to some degree contaminates the temperature trend observed in the mid- to upper troposphere and perhaps masks the warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect. So what happens if the stratospheric cooling component is removed from the troposphere’s temperature record? That’s what Fu and colleagues’ set out to do.

Figure 1. Atmospheric contribution to the satellite-based temperature observations of the stratosphere (dashed red line) and mid- to upper- troposphere (solid blue line). Notice the region of overlap (shaded pink) that indicates some portion of the stratosphere contributes to observations of the troposphere’s temperatures.

     They set out to use satellite temperature measurements of the stratosphere as an indicator of how much cooling has worked its way into the history of tropospheric temperatures. By combining the two datasets in such a way as to remove stratospheric cooling contamination, Fu concludes true temperatures in the troposphere have been warming at a greater rate than that reported to date, one which brings the satellite measurements more in line with surface observations and climate model projections. In this way, they believe they have solved the riddle concerning the large discrepancy between the trends in surface temperatures and those of the troposphere — a discrepancy climate models are not able replicate.
     As in Paul Simon’s immortal lyric, “Slow down, you move too fast.”
     Long ago, the co-founders of the original satellite-based temperature history (University of Alabama-Huntsville scientists John Christy and Roy Spencer) recognized that stratospheric temperatures were contaminating satellite measurements of the middle and upper troposphere. Spurred by a desire to produce a “true” tropospheric-only temperature dataset, in the late 1980s and early 1990s Spencer and Christy extensively examined various methodologies, including one like Fu et al. describe. They quickly realized that such a technique is infeasible because it produces a situation that violates a basic law of physics — namely, energy must be positive (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The stratospheric contribution to the satellite-based measurements of tropospheric temperatures. Solutions that don’t violate the basic laws of physics must have a weighting that is greater than or equal to zero.

The stratospheric contribution to raw tropospheric temperature observations is represented by the red line (top). The best, most physically realistic adjustment to the raw observations uses data in the stratosphere to adjust tropospheric temperatures and is represented by the green line (middle).

The solution used by Fu et al. appears as the blue line (bottom). The physically impossible negative contribution (shaded region with hatching) roughly equals the amount of positive contribution (shaded region without hatching), such that the total contribution from the stratosphere equals zero.

   There are three curves in Figure 2. The top, red line represents the stratosphere’s contribution to temperature measurements of the troposphere. Ideally, this value would be zero, indicating no contribution. By combining the tropospheric measurements with actual measurements of stratospheric temperature, it is possible to “subtract out” some of the stratosphere’s impact. But this must be carefully done or else a non-physical result is produced. You can’t remove more than you have at the outset.
     The “zero” (black, horizontal) line represents the limit of removal. A result below this line relies on “negative” energy, which defies a law of physics. The middle (green, dashed) line shows the best, physically possible solution that can be produced using data from the stratosphere to adjust temperatures in the troposphere. It still makes a sizeable stratospheric contribution.
     The blue (bottom) line represents Fu et al.’s solution. They succeed in setting the stratospheric contribution roughly equal to zero (the average of the area above and below zero), but in doing so they create an unrealistic representation of the real atmosphere. Though the portions in the stratosphere appear to cancel each other, the problem is this: The atmosphere in the negative portion is cooling rapidly (because of ozone depletion) while the atmosphere in the positive portion is changing very little.
     In terms of net effect, Fu et al. multiply the rapid-cooling-trend layer by a too-large negative factor (making it appear to warm), while multiplying a near-zero-trend layer by a positive factor (which will have a very minor impact). Rather than canceling the stratospheric influence, Fu’s method adds a spurious warming trend to the net result. Simply put, Fu et al. overcorrect for stratospheric cooling.
     In the interest of good science, Spencer and Christy abandoned this technique years ago because even the best acceptable solution (the middle curve in Figure 2) still has too much stratospheric influence. Instead, they developed a clever solution that makes use of different viewing angles by a single channel aboard the satellite. In this way, they measure temperatures occurring lower in the atmosphere and are able to produce the now famous lower tropospheric temperature history, one that essentially is free of stratospheric effects, and one that shows only about half as much global warming during the past twenty-five years as does the network of surface thermometers scattered across the globe.
     Just a few weeks ago, another in a long string of publications demonstrated anew why we can have confidence in Spencer and Christy’s dataset (see http://www.co2andclimate.org/wca/2004/wca_15f.html for details). But here we are, more than a dozen years down the road and a technique discarded as physically implausible rears its head again. How Fu et al.’s physically-impossible result made it through Nature’s peer review process is unfathomable. Yet again, the reviewers Nature relies on to ensure scientifically sound results fail the needs of the publication.
     Are Nature’s editors intentionally allowing articles on certain topics to be published despite a lack of scientific worthiness? Are the editors underqualified to judge the scientific merit of the research or are they unable to assign competent reviewers to do so? Whichever the case may be, the result is the same: When it comes to climate change, Nature’s reputation is becoming severely degraded.
References:
Christy, J. R., and W. B. Norris, 2004: What may we conclude about global tropospheric temperature trends? Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L06211, doi:10.1029/2003GL019361.
Fu, Q., et al., 2004. Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, 429, 55-58.
Spencer, R.W., and J.R. Christy, 1990. Precise monitoring of global temperature trends from satellites. Science, 247, 1558-1562.

I've never met anyone who knows enough about physics and who believes in global warming to even have an intelligent discussion about the matter.

YEC INTREP -

http://www.iceagenow.com/