Thin Polar Bears Called Sign of Global Warming

WASHINGTON, DC, May 16, 2002 (ENS) - Hungry polar bears are one of the early signs that global warming is impacting Arctic habitat, suggests a new study from World Wildlife Fund. The report reviews the threats faced by the world's 22,000 polar bears and highlights growing evidence that human induced climate change is the number one long term threat to the survival of the world's largest land based carnivores.

Global warming threatens to destroy critical polar bear habitat, charges the report, "Polar Bears at Risk." The burning of coal and other fuels emits carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that blanket the earth, trap in heat and cause global warming.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change in the polar region is expected to be the greatest of anywhere on Earth.

"The WWF report shows that polar bears in Hudson Bay are being impacted by climate change," said Lynn Rosentrater, coauthor of the report and climate scientist at the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Arctic program. "The polar bear's basis for survival is being threatened by the reduction of the sea ice."

"Since the sea ice is melting earlier in the spring, polar bears move to land earlier without having developed as much fat reserves to survive the ice free season," Rosentrater explained. "They are skinny bears by the end of summer, which in the worst case can affect their ability to reproduce."

Increasing CO2 emissions have caused Arctic temperatures to rise by five degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, and the extent of sea ice has decreased by six percent over the past 20 years. By around 2050, scientists now predict a 60 percent loss of summer sea ice, which would more than double the summer ice free season from 60 to 150 days.

Sea ice is critical to polar bears' survival because it is the platform from where they hunt their primary prey - ringed seals and bearded seals. Diminishing ice cover and longer ice free periods limit the time the bears have on the ice to hunt and means that they have fewer fat resources to survive during the longer summer season.

Lower body weight also reduces female bears' ability to lactate, leading to fewer surviving cubs. Already, fewer than 44 percent of cubs now survive the ice free season.

As early as 1999, Canadian researchers noticed that polar bears in the Hudson Bay region were having trouble finding enough seals to eat due to the earlier breakup of sea ice. The scientists from the Canadian Wildlife Service found that weight for both male and female polar bears was declining, and female bears were having fewer cubs.

The impacts of global warming come on top of problems that polar bears already face from hunting, toxic pollution and oil development in the Arctic. The Arctic region is contaminated by pesticides and other chemicals carried by air and condensation from industrialized areas far to the south.

The pollutants enter the food chain, and animals at the top of the chain, such as polar bears, can carry tremendous body burdens of toxic chemicals. Research on polar bears has shown a link between high contaminant levels and reduced immune system function.

Due to the rapid pace of change in the Arctic, there is no time to lose in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, WWF argues. The group says major reductions can be achieved by using existing technologies to increase the energy efficiency of homes, businesses and automobiles, and by using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels.

Bipartisan support has grown in Congress for a renewable portfolio standard that would ensure that 20 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable energy by 2020. However, President George W. Bush has opposed the proposal.

World leaders will discuss a similar proposal at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in South Africa this summer. The WWF is calling on President Bush to support this initiative in Johannesburg.

"Arctic nations that are home to most of the world's polar bears should be leading the charge against global warming," said Jennifer Morgan, director of WWF's climate change program. "Instead, the United States - the world's largest global warming polluter - is essentially ignoring this problem. All eyes will be on President Bush at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa this August to test his commitment to sustainable energy solutions for climate change."

The WWF has created a new Web site: http://www.panda.org/polarbears with extensive information about polar bears and their Arctic domain. The site includes satellite tracking of two female bears, Louise and Gro, as they roam the ice pack in search of prey.

The results of this study suggest that very small towns, with populations measured in mere hundreds of inhabitants, likely have urban heat islands that are on the order of the entire amount of global warming that is believed to have occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age. With such small aggregations of people having such a dramatic impact on air temperature, it is ludicrous to believe that on top of the natural warming experienced by the earth in recovering from the Little Ice Age we can confidently discern an even more subtle increase in background temperature caused by concomitant increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. Changes in population, which have generally been positive nearly everywhere in the world over this period, could easily explain whatever tiny bit of warming is left after the natural component of warming (which must be substantial, relatively speaking) is subtracted from the total amount of warming recorded by the totality of earth's thermometers over the past century or so.

I've got a bit of time (not much) so I'm going to try and reply to some points in the posts that have piled up.

With respect to the above, this issue of "urban heat island" effects can be argued incessantly and to no resolution. For every paper that shows an urban heat island effect, I can likely find one that doesn't.

Science relies on independent corroboration. What is required is an independent data set, collected and analyzed differently, that provides a similar output. There is such a data set available.

Borehole temperature profiles. These temperature profiles, which are available from every continent except Antarctica, and which are generally rural (it's rare to go drilling in the middle of a city, or even a small town), show the same amount of warming in the past 150 years as the surface temperature record.

When you assess that data set, also figure in that some of the more mainstream skeptics (such as Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Sallie Baliunas) also agree that the warming in the past century was about 0.6 C/1 F. Michaels in particular accepts it and only expects about 1.5 C maximum warming in the next 50 years (I think ancient_geezer notes this).

So I think it's pointless to argue about how much warming has occurred in the past century. It's much more fruitful to try to determine what has caused it (recovery from Little Ice Age, solar variability, greenhouse gases, land-use changes, etc.) and then to try to assess the likely contribution of each of these factors in the next century. Some of them are out of our control, like solar variability. Some of them are in our control, like greenhouse gases. So those things that we are capable of controlling, we should attempt to do a good job of assessing how much they are really contributing. As I've noted numerous times, James Hansen of GISS has written that the contribution from CO2 can likely be best controlled by market forces and new technology in the next 50 years, so it makes more sense to concentrate on black soot aerosols, methane, and CFCs.

OK, onto the next post.

Total forcing includes changes in solar irradiation and all factors not just the anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing of CO2 that IPCC & the GCMs postulate.

I know that.

Climate sensitivity to the IPCC anthropogenic doubling of CO² concentration to 700ppm is what I thought we are discussing, not "total forcing", it is irrelevant as to what the source of heat is, heat(measured in wm^-2 ) is the same regardless of source.

Total forcing is what matters to me and to climate. If the models are wrong in their assessment of cloud effects, and if more clouds build up and substantially change the Earth's albedo, then the model results are out the window. And the models aren't very good for predictive purposes. Anybody who knows anything about them admits it. I don't know anything about them (technically speaking), but I've read enough about them to know that they aren't worth anything, prediction- wise.

The data contains substantial solar irradiation changes(astronomical forcing) and albedo changes from meteoric dust causing changes in high level(noctilucent) clouds and many indeterminate factors not accounted for.

And they never can be accounted for in paleoclimate modeling, so the point is irrelevant. All that can be done with respect to paleoclimate comparisons is to estimate the changes that can be estimated. Note that there are error bars: the forcing difference between glacial and interglacial is given as 6-9 watts per square meter. Error bars account for that which cannot be estimated (random error).

Let's sum up the whole contribution from doubling CO2 as this:

Minimum: 0.25 C. Maximum: 0.8 C. Mean: 0.5 C.

Add to that Hansen's estimate that 0.5 C of warming is "in the pipeline" (quoting one of his papers) due to ocean heat storage. So if we just figure CO2 doubling and ocean heat storage release, our range of change for the next century is 0.75 C - 1.3 C, without considering any other effects, particularly those that Hansen considers more important than CO2.

Regarding Hansen's graph, summing the means gives +1.1 W m^-2. Positive forcing adds up to +3.1 (2.3 + 0.4 + 0.4, note that the last value is solar variability) and negative forcing is -2.0 (-0.2 + -0.4 + -1.0 + -0.2 + -0.2). That's 0.8 C of warming based on the 0.75 C/1 W m^-2 assumption. Right in line with the estimates above when you add in the 0.5 C of ocean heat storage. And Hansen has published revised lower estimates of warming for the next century (not 50 years) of 2.5 C.

The "in the pipeline" quote comes from "Forcings and Chaos in Global Climate Change":

"Still a third conclusion of this study is an inference that Earth is not in radiative balance with space. Specifically, the observed temperature changes imply that Earth is absorbing about 0.5 Watt per square meter of sunlight more than it is emitting back to space. This imbalance is presumably due to greenhouse gases added to Earth's atmosphere over the past century, to which climate has only partially responded because of the large thermal inertia of the ocean. A consequence of this imbalance is that future warming of about 0.5°C can be expected even if atmospheric composition should remain fixed at today's amounts; i.e., future warming of 0.5°C is already "in the pipeline". It is this slow response of the climate system that complicates the issue of whether and how much greenhouse gas emissions should be restrained."

Next topic:

Stefan-Boltzmann is first principles. It doesn't take into account positive feedback cycles, the most important of which is the increase in atmospheric water vapor that accompanies warming. I was so bothered by this the last time it came up on FR that I emailed Hansen and got an explanatory reply about it. That's why the increase due to CO2 (direct forcing) is less than the estimated total climate forcing.

If so, do you agree that the apparent range of estimated forcing for the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 1850 to present is 0.30 - 1.30 W m-2?

I will agree that global tropospheric temperature has increased less than 0.5 C since 1850 for numerous causes including changes in solar irradiation, albedo, & GHG's.

That's not what I asked. First you estimate forcing, then you try to assess the temperature change. As we both know, that's fraught with difficulty.

Hug's work is controversial and has yet to be assessed by the climate community. It essentially constitutes a lower-bound if it's correct. Reliance on lower- bound estimates is just as dangerous as reliance on upper-bound estimates. It's clear that the oft-quoted, very-stupid IPCC upper bounds are just as unlikely to be correct as the never-quoted, just-as-stupid lower bounds. Any legitimacy in prediction (which is questionable anyway) is going to be found where there is something of a convergence in independent model output.

So now I would refer back to post 100 in this thread, with the IPCC output projections. And this figure:

Global Warming: 4-7 Degree [F] Temperature Rise Likely by 2100

"An estimated global warming range of 2.5–10.4°F was announced earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), composed of hundreds of scientists around the world. But the likelihood that the earth's temperature would warm only 2.5° or as much as 10.4° is very low, say NCAR's Wigley and coauthor Sarah Raper of the University of East Anglia in England and the Alfred Wegener Institut for Polar and Marine Research in Germany."

Since it gets confusing to mix Fahrenheit and Celsius, the equivalent Celsius range for the IPCC ranges is 1.5 - 6.2 deg. C. So I'm comfortable, and I'm probably "riding with" Hansen, to think that the most likely warming in the next century will be on the order of 1.8 deg C.

Does that make me an alarmist? I don't think so. It's about 3x as much as happened this century. And according to ecological studies, it's just under the amount of change ecosystems can tolerate and adapt to before exhibiting significant detrimental effects.

That's all I have time for now. I may have one more shot at it Friday before a break until around June 12.

Let's sum up the whole contribution from doubling CO2 as this:
Minimum: 0.25 C. Maximum: 0.8 C. Mean: 0.5 C.

Are you suggesting that doubling CO2 may raise the temperature 0.5^oC.

I can't say I agree with that estimate as I simply do not see CO2 as a factor.

Our primary issues still come down to how much heat change at the surface(watts/meter2) is due to in CO2, CH4 etc.

CO₂, which has been held to be a significant culprit in all this discussion simply does not have the concentration nor the heat capacity necessary to account for observed changes in atmospheric temperature. Nor does its IR absorbtion characteristics allow it to be a dominant factor in heat transport or activity as a GHG in comparison with that of water vapor which totally overides contribution of CO₂ the heat transport budget.

Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?
by Dr. Heinz Hug

The most any gas introduced into the atmosphere can do is act as an insulator, absorb heat as IR, and manifest the energy absorbed as temperature(radiant energy) in accord with its heat capacity(specific heat) in its relative proportion to other gases in the atmosphere.

Water vapor has more than 3 times the specific heat capacity and 3 times the concentration in the atmosphere of CO₂. Water vapor also has a latent heat that carries of 1000 times the capacity of CO₂ in absorbed heat making for an effective greenhouse capacity of more than 3,000 times that of CO₂ in the atmosphere. The full range of water vapor comes into play as it transports heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere where water vapor plays its second role of increasing the earths albedo(from around 0.1 to a variable 0.3) by creating the cloud layers. The effect of CO₂, CH₄ etc, in the concentrations they exist in earths atmosphere, are negligible as compared to water vapor and the overall thermal mass of N₂ & O₂ in the atmosphere as far as I can determine.

The transport of heat from the surface of the earth to the upper atmosphere to be radiated back into space is a consequence under virtual total control of water vapor and how it interacts in the energy budget. Other GHGs are swamped out as factors in change of atmospheric and surface temperature.

Heat must first be present from an actual source such as upwelling from the earth at about 0.57watt/m² (from 30^oC/km thermal gradiant through rock) + sporadic but temporary geothermal events and from solar irradiation which makes up the main source of thermal energy incident at TOA(top of the troposphere) as 341.9w/m². The sum of geothermal forcing & TOA solar heating, = 342.47w/m²,

If there were no atmosphere or water, the radiative temperature on earth's rock surface would be the same as it currently is on the moon, with a Bond albedo of 0.067, adjusted for earths geothermal gradiant, that works out to be a annual mean surface temperature of rock surface of:

(((1-0.067)*341.9+0.57)/5.67*10^-8)^0.25 = 273.99^oK (i.e. 0.8^oC).

Geophysical events, chemical processes(biomass, oxidation, oceanic processes etc.), provide additional heat to the equation of indeterminate but not insignificant amounts.

Reflection of the solar flux by

ocean 0.1 albedo,
soil, land with biomass 0.1 albedo,
snow&ice 0.7 albedo, and
clouds 0.7 albedo

reduce the surface heat available from the solar flux by the relative proportions facing the sun of each.

The overall temperature of the surface is a manifestation of the insulative character of the atmosphere, with heat from the surface being transported across a mean 6^oC/km temperature gradiant of the atmosphere having low themal conductivity. With IR absorbable by H₂0 & CO₂ being extinguished in the 1st 100ft of atmosphere above the surface, by far the greatest portion of the heat transport to the upper atmosphere is by air convection and phase changes in water vapor forming clouds of ice and water which in turn reduces the solar component of heat available to the earth's surface.

In short the role of GHGs other than water vapor is negligible with the prime factors being something other than change in their concentrations which are mainly an effect, not a cause of temperture change of the earth.

Is the temperature of the earth rising? It might be, but not for any factor in our control nor is such an increase discernable in the normal variablility of current tropospheric temperature patterns where it should be readily observable.

Hug's work is controversial and has yet to be assessed by the climate community. It essentially constitutes a lower-bound if it's correct.

So was Galileo's work.

Hug's work is a direct assessment of the actual IR absorption on which the CO₂ greenhouse sensitivity depends. One experiment is worth a million words of controversy. Hug did the experiment, the CGM modelers and IPCC have offered only theoretical speculation as to what CO₂ IR absorption ought to be under ideal (i.e. H₂O free) conditions. Hug's result in the presense of H₂0 has established reality can be substantially different from the ideal speculations by up to 2 orders of magnitude. The global warming(i.e. IPCC etc.) folks have yet to provide any experimental evidence they are correct in their speculative assumptions nor do they in anyway controvert Hug's results.

Here is a summary Hug's response to the GW community's, 100's of "scientists" in regards IR absorption and other objections.

Hug & Barret,
DECHEMA colloquium, Frankfurt on 11^th Oct, 2001

"An estimated global warming range of 2.5–10.4°F was announced earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)"

Problem is IPCC depends on the CGMs and the assumptions inherent in them, which are very clearly flawed and incomplete. Other estimates based in emperical and theretical concerns, not just IPCC's CGMs, range from 1.4^oC(2.5_oF) downward. With historical 100yr variability studies indicating a range of +1.4^oC(2.5^oF) upper probability(1s) boundry and -1.0^oC(1s) lower boundry.

Frankly, as I have said, there very well be be a degree of warming going on. But the state of knowledge in atmospheric science, especially as regards the full roles of water vapor in the atmosphere, does not allow anyone to make predictions for the next 30days much less 100 yrs.

The UCAR pictorial of probability, is nothing more than a reflection of IPCC model variablility and does not reflect the natural variability of the real world, only the GW apriori assumptions that anthropogenic changes in GHG concentrations must cause substantive upward temperature change.

"New estimates of sulfur dioxide and other emissions, along with updated information on carbon storage, ocean circulation, radiation, and other components of the earth system have improved computer models of the earth's climate and led the IPCC to both raise and widen its estimated range of global temperature increase. The latest range of 2.5-10.4°F is up significantly from the panel's 1995 estimates of 1.4–6.3°."

This just a repeat of the same model outputs over again in another form, no indication they have impoved there water vapor models, which they have not done.

I repeat, others using both theoretical and empirical studies come up with an entirely different set of projections ranging downward from the IPCC low.

I find it interesting that out of all the range provided, the GW folks never present or even apparently consider the possibility that global climate temperatures can fall as well as rise. This is a telling note. They appear to be totally dedicated to demonstrating rising global temperture inspite of historical evidence that climates tempertures make excursions downward even with atmospheric CO₂ concentrations much higher than even those assumed doublings of IPCCs GCM story lines.

"The climate on its surface is completely out of line if you extrapolated the conditions as if they were Earth," said Fred Taylor, a planetary physicist at the University of Oxford, England. "There's something very wrong with our modeling.""

That's not surprising, as the relationship between the atmospheric density of CO2 and its contribution to greenhouse temperture has been understood for a long time. The reality of earlier empirical work just doesn't fit with the agenda, so it has been ignored by IPCC, and they have stuck by their apriori assumptions as regards climate sensitivity in regards CO2 inspite of numerous empirical measures and theoretical considerations to the contrary.

Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?

Effects of Doubling CO₂ from 300ppm to 600ppm

A Lukewarm Greenhouse

Sherwood Idso plotted CO2 greenhouse warming vs CO2 atmospheric pressure for Earth, Mars and Venus using a log/log scale obtaining a straight line on the graph(fig 4.1 in Section 4.2) and calculated its equation to conclude:

Carbon dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition
by Sherwood Idso, 1989 (ref. Idso S.B., IBR Press), section 4.2 fig 4.1:

"Based upon the resulting solid-line relationship, it would appear that a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of Earth's atmospheric CO2 content could only increase the planet's mean surface air temperature by about 0.4 degrees C ...".

Once again an empirical confirmation for a lower sensitivity parameter regarding CO₂ forcing than is assumed by IPCC models and their proponents.

The same change in CO₂ concentration is assumed by IPCC to be able to induce 8 or more times that temperature increase. IPCC's GCM estimate for a 300ppm increase of CO₂ demands 4w/m² forcing, a minimum of 3^oC change by their assumptions.

We can add this to the other empirical determinations of climate sensitivity in regards to CO₂ forcing that indicate a much lower sensitivity to CO₂ than IPCC and others in the global warming community care to acknowledge.

To find yet another, is no great surpise anymore.

Parting shot (for 1.5 weeks) number 1:

I wrote:

Let's sum up the whole contribution from doubling CO2 as this:

Minimum: 0.25 C. Maximum: 0.8 C. Mean: 0.5 C.

AG: Are you suggesting that doubling CO2 may raise the temperature 0.5oC.

No, I merely took took the range of all of the estimates in the references you provided for the estimates of how much the temperature will increase with CO2 doubled.

I can't say I agree with that estimate as I simply do not see CO2 as a factor.

Perhaps you don't. But everyone else does to some extent (perhaps Hug is an exception) as indicated by the range of values I summarized.

Our primary issues still come down to how much heat change at the surface (watts/meter2) is due to in CO2, CH4 etc.

And you have also noted the importance of water vapor - the most important greenhouse gas.

CO2, which has been held to be a significant culprit in all this discussion simply does not have the concentration nor the heat capacity necessary to account for observed changes in atmospheric temperature. Nor does its IR absorbtion characteristics allow it to be a dominant factor in heat transport or activity as a GHG in comparison with that of water vapor which totally overides contribution of CO2 the heat transport budget.

Again, you are taking a minority view. Are Hansen's radiative forcings wrong for CO2?

Does Hug suggest that the radiation absorption characteristics of CO2 be ignored? If so, are CH4 and CFCs not significant either (they are described in the literature as much more potent GHGs, but their radiative forcing contribution is less than CO2 because their concentrations are so much lower.)

Water vapor has more than 3 times the specific heat capacity and 3 times the concentration in the atmosphere of CO2. Water vapor also has a latent heat that carries of 1000 times the capacity of CO2 in absorbed heat making for an effective greenhouse capacity of more than 3,000 times that of CO2 in the atmosphere. The full range of water vapor comes into play as it transports heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere where water vapor plays its second role of increasing the earths albedo(from around 0.1 to a variable 0.3) by creating the cloud layers. The effect of CO2, CH4 etc, in the concentrations they exist in earths atmosphere, are negligible as compared to water vapor and the overall thermal mass of N2 & O2 in the atmosphere as far as I can determine.

Not in dispute.

Does this consider longwave radiation? Doesn't seem to.

The overall temperature of the surface is a manifestation of the insulative character of the atmosphere, with heat from the surface being transported across a mean 6oC/km temperature gradiant of the atmosphere having low themal conductivity. With IR absorbable by H20 & CO2 being extinguished in the 1st 100ft of atmosphere above the surface, by far the greatest portion of the heat transport to the upper atmosphere is by air convection and phase changes in water vapor forming clouds of ice and water which in turn reduces the solar component of heat available to the earth's surface.

This contention is disputed by the observed cooling of the stratosphere in satellite data, you know. You are basically saying that radiative transfer is negligible (as far as I can tell). But the transfer of heat into and out of the stratosphere is only radiative, there are no significant convective processes. The increased trapping of longwave radiation at the surface by GHGs (CO2 included) has caused an observed cooling of the stratosphere, because the only heat source for the stratosphere is radiative transfer from the lower atmosphere. So I think there's a problem with what you're saying, unless I'm misinterpreting it.

Parting shot (for 1.5 weeks) number 2:

The borehole temperatures are calibrated against the surface records that are probably contaminated with urban heat islands, so it is not an independent data set as cogitator falsely claims.

I don't understand what you're saying above. What does "calibrated against surface records" mean? I was involved in a fairly lengthy discussion of borehole data in another thread, which might have been hard to find had not friend Aurelius posted a comment to me today:

Borehole data suggest global warming is global

Take a look at reply 15. Attempting to summarize, they "invert" the subsurface temperature log (temperature vs. depth) to derive a global surface temperature history. In what sense are the borehole temperatures "calibrated" against the surface record?

There is an independent data set, namely pressure transducers on balloons that can measure the temperature in the surface layer from 1000 to 850 mb. Pielke showed that there was very little warming in this layer and thus strongly indicates the surface network measurements are flawed.

I found this quite interesting. Thanks. One of the wonders of the WWW is that it's possible, if you're lucky, to find really cutting-edge, new research quite rapidly. After you posted this, I wanted to see if there has been any update in the field of tropospheric temperature analysis. Lo and behold, it would appear that there's been some new developments this week. The reference below is a PDF document, small, of the abstracts for papers presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting taking place in Washington D.C. this week.

http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm02-pdf/sm02_A42D.pdf

They had a session entitled "Upper Air Temperature Data Products for Climate Studies: Methods, Products, and Challenges". Roy Spencer presented the lead paper. But the next one was pretty darned interesting. I typed in the abstract (you can thank me later) for this one and one other. Emphases are my insertions.

A 23-year Time Series of Middle Tropospheric Temperature From the MSU Series of Instruments: Mears, C.A., Schabel, M., Wentz, F.
Satellite measurements of the Earth's microwave emission are a crucial element in the development of an accurate system for long-term monitoring of atmospheric temperature, providing much more uniform spatial and temporal coverage than in situ observations. The Microwave Sounding Units (MSU) operating on NOAA polar-orbiting platforms have been the principal sources of satellite temperature profiles to date, with measuremnts of microwave radiance in four channels spanning the surface through the stratosphere extending over more than two decades, beginning in January 1979 and continuing through the present. The application of the MSU time series by Christy and Spencer to studies of climate change has played a high-profile and controversial role in the debate over the presence and magnitude of anthropogenic warming signals during the past decade. In an effort to validate thee results, we have performed an end-to-end independent analysis of the middle and upper tropospheric data from MSU Channel 2. Our results show trends approximately 0.1K/decade warmer than those found by Spencer an Christy. We will present these results and details of our analysis, focusing on possible causes of the differences between the two sets of results.

Validation of an MSU Tropospheric Temperature Reanalysis - Comparison with SST, SSM/I Vapor, and Model Data: Schabel, M., Mears, C., Wentz, F.
A new ground-up analysis of the MSU channel 2 mid-tropospheric temperature data set is compared to existing satellite-derived temperature proxies based on Reynolds' SST and SSM/I total column water vapor in order to assess the consitency of long-term trends. The coupling between thee variables is compared with corresponding GCM model results forced with observed SSTs. This validation work is used to asess the significance of discrepancies between the new Remote Sensing Systems MSU channel 2 data product and the Christy and Spencer MSU channel 2 product produce by the University of Alabama and estimate bounds on the accuracy with which these observations can be constrained by other existing data sets.

Now in case you or those following along don't recognize the names, Wentz and Schabel are the researchers that previously found the orbital-decay discrepancy that Spencer and Christy hadn't corrected for (in a 1998 publication). This correction caused the much-vaunted lower troposphere cooling trend to become a negligible warming trend. The significance of this is that Wentz and Schabel found a definite error in the way Spencer and Christy analyzed their data, and this required Spencer and Christy to reanalyze it.

Now, in this paper (which I will clearly note, is a meeting presentation and not yet a peer-reviewed publication), they suggest that the same MSU channel 2 data analyzed by Spencer and Christy as showing no significant trend in lower troposphere temperatures has a significant trend (0.1 K/decade, which is the same as 0.1 C/decade), which agrees with the surface trend, the borehole trend, and the Angell radiosonde data trend from 1958-1997. So, with Pielke's data thrown into the mix, it would appear that there is now the potential for some very interesting discussion in the next few months.

Wentz actually owns a company that analyzes satellite data from various satellites for meteorological applications, Remote Sensing Systems. Here's a short biography.

The Spencer and Christy MSU2 data set has been a fortress for greenhouse warming skeptics. All I can say at this point is that it appears the fortress is under assault. Time will tell if the walls will go down (and if they do, they'll take a number of skeptical arguments down with them). One of the things that won't happen is an improvement in our predictive capability for the next century; it would only mean that there is less uncertainty in the observed warming signal than before.

I was concerned enough about Hug's results to do a Web search. One, I wish to withdraw my objection with regard to community review. Both Barrett and Hug have published on this matter. Barrett published in Spectrochimica Acta (see below) and Hug has published in German journals. I found this summary of a reply to Barrett's published paper (which is the genesis of Hug's work). The words below the reference are not mine.

-----

"Comment on "The roles of carbon dioxide and water vapour in warming and cooling the Earth's troposphere" " John Houghton Spectrochimica Acta v.51A, p.1391-1392 ( 1995 )

Sir John very politely, and carefully points out the problems, and goes on to explain that as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, so too does the average height (about 6km) from which CO2 emits radiation in space. Since atmospheric temperature in the lower atmosphere falls with altitude, if nothing changes other than the amount of CO2, the amount of radiation to space is reduced. For atmospheric CO2, this reduction is about 4Wm^-2. To restore the Earth's energy balance the temperature thoughout the lower atmosphere has to increase - hence the enhanced greenhouse effect.

-----

That's where the argument rests. My time is limited, but I also admit that it would be impossible for me to go into any greater detail about Hug and Barrett's results. Apparently there are lengthy "Open Reviews" on Daly's Web site, for anyone that really wants to dive in.

I find it interesting that out of all the range provided, the GW folks never present or even apparently consider the possibility that global climate temperatures can fall as well as rise. This is a telling note. They appear to be totally dedicated to demonstrating rising global temperture inspite of historical evidence that climates tempertures make excursions downward even with atmospheric CO2 concentrations much higher than even those assumed doublings of IPCCs GCM story lines.

But you need a mechanism for cooling. The only one that I can think of is volcanism (sulfur aerosols, as demonstrated by El Chichon and Mt. Pinatubo). What else could occur that would result in cooling? (It now occurs to me that there has been some question about the sign of forcing for black soot aerosols, i.e., do they shade more = cooling, or do they absorb more = warming? Hansen thinks that absorption outweighs shading.

Sorry that I can't continue for about 12 days. Not to be mysterious about it, I'm going on vacation.

Again, you are taking a minority view.

Which majority? IPCC's? I wasn't aware that the experimental science was subject to democratic rule.

The more I investigate, the more I find that there may be something significantly wrong with the theoretical basis of the "Greenhouse Effect", as it had been proposed first to argue for high surface temperatures of Venus, much higher than measurement has since show Venus to actually have, and now to argue a potential rise in earths global temperatures in much the same manner as the original greenhouse debate regarding the surface temperature of Venus.

Are Hansen's radiative forcings wrong for CO2?

Hansen is merely repeating IPCC on that forcing he hasn't justified it by an experimental showing and there is strong experimental evidence against it.

No one seems to know where or how IPCC came up with the 4w/m² per 300ppm change in CO₂ comes from. It appears to be one of those numbers everyone points to someone else as saying, but no one seems to nail down the source and experimental or theorectical verification of it.

I'll stand by :

Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?

Hug & Barret,
DECHEMA colloquium, Frankfurt on 11^th Oct, 2001

Effects of Doubling CO₂ from 300ppm to 600ppm

Carbon dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition
by Sherwood Idso, 1989 (ref. Idso S.B., IBR Press), section 4.2 fig 4.1:

"Based upon the resulting solid-line relationship, it would appear that a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of Earth's atmospheric CO2 content could only increase the planet's mean surface air temperature by about 0.4 degrees C ...".

Is Venus Our Future:

"The more we found out the less we understood," said Donald Turcotte, a geophysicist at Cornell University in New York.
Among Venus' remaining mysteries is why it's not hotter. Although Venus is slightly closer to the sun than Earth, orbits more slowly and has a thicker layer of clouds trapping heat in, the planet's atmosphere also reflects about 75 percent of the sun's radiation. (Earth's atmosphere reflects about 30 percent.) According to current climate models, these factors should make Venus even hotter than it is.
"The climate on its surface is completely out of line if you extrapolated the conditions as if they were Earth," said Fred Taylor, a planetary physicist at the University of Oxford, England. "There's something very wrong with our modeling."

Until such time as Hug's experimental result is shown to be wrong by actual measurements in the atmosphere or that the experiment itself was unquestionably flawed by being unable to reproduce his results.

Seeing as the experiment was carried out with the same mixture of gases as that found in the atmosphere that should be the least that is necessary to controvert his findings.

Does Hug suggest that the radiation absorption characteristics of CO2 be ignored?

Because of the overlap of water vapor IR absorption spectum and heat transferred to N2 & O2 by kinetic collision, yes. Read the article.

If so, are CH4 and CFCs not significant either (they are described in the literature as much more potent GHGs, but their radiative forcing contribution is less than CO2 because their concentrations are so much lower.)

Their IR spectums are overlapped by water vapor as well, heat transport is still dominanted by kinetic collisions with N₂ & O₂ and water vapor, rather than IR re-radiation and re-absorption by those molecules. Same effect as was demonstrated by the Hug experiment, can apply to the CH₄ & CFCs as well. Their admitted lower effects simply do not require us to carry out that experiment in order to establish a problem in the basic theory applied by the global warming theorists as represented by the IPCC and their apologists.

Does this consider longwave radiation? Doesn't seem to.

IR radiation is the longwave radiation on which all this debate is about, DUH!

Note the lower left of this graph H₂0 overlaps the longwave 15cm spectral emmission of CO₂ & dominates 8micron radiation and above to the right.

The bottom line of Hug & Barret, is that IR(i.e. longwave) absorption is saturated within the 1st hundred feet of the surface, the energy absorbed is passed on to N₂ & O₂ molecules in kinetic collisions and re-radation to the broader band absorption of water vapor, rather than the re-radiation of IR at re-absorbable (CO₂, CH₄, CFC) wavelengths envisioned in the IPCC models.

GHG contributions are minimal because there is very little energy transported by re-radiation of IR from the lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere, the IR energy absorbed at the surface is predominately and in fact overwhealmingly transferred to N2 & O2 through kinetic collisions, and transported as latent heat and the broad IR absorption of watervapor.

Radiant transport of CO₂, CH₄, & CFC IR especially, (upon which the GCM model theory rests,) is virtually nil above 100 feet or less of the atmosphere. The greatest tranport of heat is by convection of , and as latent heat of water vapor.

Blackbody radiation, and radiation from latent heat of water vapor is lost to space in the highest levels of the upper atmosphere where mean free path is sufficient to allow it, where the condensation and freezing of watervapor allows latent heat loss as radiation. Because of atmospheric IR saturation, re-radiation return to the surface in the efficient manner the greenhouse effect requires, is virtually non existant. That heat is predominately trapped in the atmosphere as kinetic motion of molecules or as latent heat of vaporization in re-evaporation of atmospheric water.

The experiment to disprove Hug & Barret is very simple.

Measure 15micron radiant flux (from CO₂ absorption spectum) at the surface, then measure it 300 feet up in the atmosphere. If the flux is substantially the same, IPCC & the GCMs are vindicated as IR reradiation would be the dominant mode of heat transfer on which the GCMs stand.

If the 15micron flux at 300ft above ground is substantially different, then Hug & Barret are vindicated.

This contention is disputed by the observed cooling of the stratosphere in satellite data, you know.

The statosphere loses heat to space, and it is to thin to absorb radiant energy released from blackbody radiation and from release of latent heat of watervapor transported to the upper atmosphere.

You are basically saying that radiative transfer is negligible (as far as I can tell).

In the troposhere, like in transport from the surface.

But the transfer of heat into and out of the stratosphere is only radiative, there are no significant convective processes.

When I speak of the atmosphere in the context of heat transport from the surface, I am speaking of the troposphere.

The stratosphere is indeed radiative transfer, simply because it does not impede the transmission of IR by absorption, the mean free path of molecules is too high, not many molecules in the way to absorb the outgoing IR radiation. The is very little in the stratosphere to "transport" heat.

The heat in the troposphere is transported predominately by convection and transport of latent heat in watervapor carried by hot air to the upper troposphere.

Please do not confuse the issues with symantics. My statements have been clear. The Stratosphere is not anywhere near the 1st hundred feet of the surface of the earth where IR from the surface is absorbed and dissapated into molecular motion rather than radiant energy.

So I think there's a problem with what you're saying, unless I'm misinterpreting it.

You are misinterpreting it.

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