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It unfortunately takes a little bit of time, but climate skeptics’ claims that observations don’t support climate model projections aren’t supported as more observations are made of the Earth system. The latest instance: instead of using just climate projections, a pair of researchers have used observations to try to determine whether internal variability (natural year-to-year changes), self-acceleration (positive feedback loops), or external forcing were most the likely drivers of observed sea-ice retreat in the past 30 years.
The takeaway from this research: external forcing (CO2) is shown to be most responsible. This is a good case of how science works: investigate multiple potential causal factors and let the observed data speak for themselves.
The captions for the figures below come directly from the paper.
Figure 1. Evolution of Arctic sea-ice extent in (a) March and (c) September and the year-to-year changes in (b) March and (d) September. For this figure, an offset of +0.35 106 km2 in September and of 0.16 106 km2 in March has
been added to the entire original NSIDC dataset [Fetterer et al., 2002, 2010] to make the time series consistent with the original HadISST satellite time series during the period 1979–1996 [Met Office Hadley Centre, 2006].
The investigation included 60 years of robust sea ice data – from HadISST as well as NSIDC. They used NSIDC in the satellite era because it provides a more consistent interpretation of the period. As you can see, conditions in the Arctic started changing in the 1980s. By 2000, both March and September conditions were different than conditions in the middle of the 20th century. One big question when looking at this or similar time series data is whether the recent decline in sea ice is natural or not. The following figure helps to answer that question quite definitively:
Figure 2 [4 in paper]. Relationship between sea-ice evolution and various forcings. (a) Temporal evolution of solar irradiance [Fröhlich, 2000], AO-index [Thompson and Wallace, 1998], PDOindex [Mantua and Hare, 2002], and CO2 concentration (scaling with a 1.66 W/m2 equivalence for a 100 ppm increase [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007]). The thin lines denote monthly values, while thick lines denote averages over 1 year (CO2), 5 years (AO-index, PDO-index) and 10 years (solar irradiance). (b–e) September sea ice extent from 1953 until 2010 is plotted against annual mean values of the various forcings whenever data was available. The R2 values are calculated for a standard linear regression as indicated by the shading (2s).
The primary message of this figure is the takeaway from the research: the correlation between sea-ice extent and CO2 is a remarkably strong 0.84. Moreover, no similar correlation was found between sea-ice extent and any other forcing: not irradiance, PDO-index, AO-index (shown in figure above), cosmic rays, volcanic eruptions, or poleward oceanic heat transport (not shown in paper). In other words, the set of explanations that skeptics like to use to explain away a multitude of climate change effects has been shown to not explain the decline in sea-ice. Irradiance has a positive, but much smaller relationship than does CO2 concentration. The PDO- and AO-indexes have no statistical explanation for sea-ice extent.
The paper includes this important passage:
Note that the same reasoning allows us to conclude that changes in CO2 concentration are not the main driver for the observed sea-ice evolution in the Antarctic. With no clear trend in the sea-ice extent there, there is virtually no correlation with the increasing CO2 concentration. This underpins the fact that in the Antarctic, sea-ice extent is at the moment primarily governed by sea-ice dynamics. In contrast, in the Arctic the sea-ice movement is constrained by the surrounding land masses and the thermodynamic forcing becomes more relevant there.
At this point, the rise in CO2 remains the leading explanation for the decline in Arctic sea-ice extent. Since this work was based on statistical analyses of observational data, I eagerly await observational-type climate change skeptics to accept the work as valid. It won’t happen, of course, as I’ve found that the vast majority of skeptics won’t accept any amount or type of evidence. That’s because the real issue is based on values, which skeptics don’t want to discuss. Instead, they use climate change as a proxy argument.
For the rest of us, this is an important result. I truthfully do await scientific responses to this work. It should be challenged on legitimate scientific grounds, if it is challenged at all.
Cross-posted at WeatherDem – the blog.
33 Comments
Its great to see science use real world observations to double check their theories now if only we can get economists to do the same.
For me an alarming trend is the number of weather satellites continues to rapidly diminish under the democratic-republican Uniparty. It is as if the prevailing view is, “We have already made up our mind and don’t want to finance any research that might change it.” See http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/05/looming-crisis.html
It’s a fix-the-facts-to-the-policy technique I think more of the public sees through and realizes there might be concurrent privatization going s.t. the public starts looking around for the vault projects still carrying on the research.
Doing the same thing with economic data. Gonna abolish it (death of a thousand cuts) bc it doesn’t show what they want.
Also, melting ice is apparently releasing methane which is worse than CO2.
Yes. The science is really irrefutable. But I think it has been so for some years.
I promise that alone will not change the behavior of corporate power. They are just delighted the Northwest passage is becoming reality and all those thin or open places in the ice are just opening up access to more carbon based fuel.
They really live a suicidal life of risk with the notion that all that is important in their life is suck out the greatest selfish pleasures, then die.
They are hanging themselves for that instant of hypoxic orgasm.
I think we’d all do well with the “skeptics” explaining away ocean acidification as well.
Long before any climate change impacts ecosystems, human population pressures will wreak devastation. But discussion of population is largely taboo – - I’m guessing the current ratio of articles climate/population at more than 1000 to 1.
And we have Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” from 40 years ago to thank in part. Ehrlich’s absurd predictions – much like many of the recent climate predictions – did a huge disservice. Because hundreds of millions of people did not die from famine by the 1980s, the population issue became a source of humor.
Not to mention that the UN continues to underestimate continued rapid population growth in large parts of the world. The famous “not to worry” approach. Haiti has roughly the same area and population as does Massachusetts. Its population has quadrupled in 50 years – even with significant emigration. It’s more than earthquakes and corrupt government. The western half of the island of Hispaniola is an environmental wasteland.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Every other aid agency has some micro-project for Malawi – but the reality is that its population has quintipuled from 3 to 15 million since 1960 and is forecast to exceed 40 million by 2050. 40 million?!?!
Ireland’s population exceeded 8 million prior to the Great Potato Famine. That’s more than 250 people per square mile. Environmental degradation – monoculture. Deaths and emigration halved population by 1900. Ireland’s population still is only 6.5 million.
Yes, human activity has had an impact on climate patterns. And there are many in power who would gladly exchange human well-being for additional pennies of profit. Yet, long before any of the climate predictions come true – human population and growing human consumption will have shattered the biosphere.
… errr… climate projections are coming true now, not in some nebulous future.
And the rate of population growth for any given demographic sector declines as the standard of living rises.
Add clean energy sources and advanced agricultural techniques (I’m not talking about Monsanto) and the population can comfortably level out at 1.5 to 2 times the current level… but not with the <1% running the show for their sole benefit.
But if the elites are allowed to continue living in their power fantasy of a dream world then the population will not be a problem because it will simply cease to exist.
Carbon is the bomb… not population.
Population is the bomb. Carbon is one piece of shrapnel, along with fresh water, energy, arable land and a host of other sub-problems.
I did some googling a few weeks ago.
Population-7 billion or so
Arable land in world 8-billion acres
Arable land to feed one person – just over one acre
the remainder of the problem is left for the reader.
Population is the bomb. Carbon is one piece of shrapnel, along with fresh water, energy, arable land and a host of other sub-problems.
I did some googling a few weeks ago.
Population-7 billion or so and climbing
Arable land in world 8-billion acres and diminishing
Arable land to feed one person – just over one acre
the remainder of the problem is left for the reader.
Haiti / Dominican Republic border satellite photo –
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100114-haiti-earthquake-landslides/
The DR isn’t great, but the land in Haiti is stripped bare.
And don’t tell me that doesn’t have an impact on climate.
Similarly, the desiccation of Lake Chad.
It’s a lot more than climate change – chiefly population.
Again, the countries in the Lake Chad basin have seen a quadrupling of population since 1960. Their economies remain chiefly pastoral – the climate zone is semi-arid – the the land has become increasingly denuded. Land that once could survive periodic drought – is now unable to do so. And water runoff into Lake Chad has declined as a result.
http://www.unep.org/dewa/giwa/areas/reports/r43/conclusions_giwa_r43.pdf
U.N. report – root cause – rapid population growth with its resulting water demands.
Believe what you will – - meh.
Sorry I am not going to pile on the Agenda 21 bandwagon here. It is just another clever tool of the NWO to cop-opt those of us who who have a sincere concern for the environment into further tightening the noose already around our own necks… to the elite’s delight. It is much better if we hang ourselves!
Not quantified in in the global warming debate to date is:
1) Climate change as a way of making war and controlling economies. It may seem like science fiction but in April 1977 William Cohen, then secretary of defense said: “Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves… So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations…It’s real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts.”
Until this factor is quantified as part of the global warming debate I am a skeptic.
2) The entire solar system has been found to be warming either because of solar effects or a greater effect that relates to galactic interference in our solar system. I don’t think man made CO2 has made it to other planets yet.
3) Wall street and the bankers are licking their lips at the prospect of taxing and trading CO2 emissions.
-The amount of money spent on anti-Anti Global Warming (AGW) activity by organizations is around US$2 million per year, primarily from Heartland.
- The amount of money spent by pro-AGW organisations on research is about US$3 billion per year, about 1,000 times larger. It mainly comes from big government spending on pro-AGW climate research and on promoting the AGW message, and from the Greens.
- Emissions trading by the finance industry was US$120 billion in 2008. This will grow to over US$1 trillion by 2012, and carbon emission permit trading will be the largest “commodity” market in the world—larger than oil, steel, rice, wheat etc. Typically the finance industry might pocket 1% – 5% of the turnover, so even now their financial interest matches the spending on pro-AGW activities and soon it will vastly exceed it.
4) There is more, but you should probably do you own research.
Actually… not :)
First, understand that I agree that permanent growth is impossible. Indeed, it is a logical absurdity.
Our differences lie in the estimations of how much margin we have left and where carbon lies on the scale of threats facing us as compared to overall population growth.
That 1.2 acres per person comes from the work of Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University. But that figure is to maintain current American dietary standards… which is indeed unsustainable as that “standard” includes large amounts of factory-farmed meat and fat, and entirely too much sugar.
The study answers the question of how many 20th-century Americans can the world support with currently used agricultural methods.
Dr. Pimentel was also involved in a study that showed that organic farming can have equal or greater yields than non-organic farming for equal acreages, so he’s not exactly your usual university-based corporate tool.
But the acre-per-person results of one of his studies has been seized upon and over-emphasized by various sustainability groups. I can’t really blame them… they’re fighting a desperate battle against the madness of planetary rule by and for the <1%… but they do not consider the limitations, the boundaries that should be applied to that study in any meaningful conversation.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. used to have a comparable measure but estimated that a minimumalist vegetarian diet could be sustained at .17 acres person… i.e. ~6 persons per acre.
That's pushing things a bit, diet-wise, but it shows that we do indeed have some margin left… if we start using it wisely.
Thus estimates of populations at 1.5 to 2 times the current level are not out of line with sustainable agriculture… if we pry control of planetary resources out of the unthinking grasp of the <1%.
A more accurate, and practical, regime can be found at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/am859e/am859e01.pdf
It won’t be easy, but given sustainable energy sources it is doable.
At the high-end estimate of 2x current population we’ll probably wind up factory-farming the actual farms themselves….
Sorry, but CO2-induced climate change is the most likely cause of the current warming trend.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Will the <1% take any and all advantages they can from the oncoming disasters that they are responsible for? Of course they will. They are the ultimate opportunists.
Observation: good science.
No, I don’t think that’s true at all. See Scientific American:
Also, ito global warming, the fact that there’s no correlation between CO2 and Antartica sea ice extent, as well as the fact that CO2 is well mixed, implies you can’t extrapolate any effect from CO2, seen in the Arctic, to the whole world, anyway.
BTW, I saw a paper at Watts Up With That that used satellite gravity measurements to show that the mass of the Antarctic ice was declining (even if ice extent has been mostly unchanged). Doesn’t mean that anthropogenic CO2 caused it, but it’d be interesting to rerun this sort of analysis looking at ice volume, as per the gravity data.
Overall, it looks to me like the scientific case for catastrophic
AGW has collapsed. See, especially The Emily Litella moment for climate science and CO2. When you say,
, I read it as projection, as much as anything else. Watts Up With That regularly rips apart published, peer reviewed papers by “climate scientists”. I wish they’d solicit Willis Eschenbach’s criticism – the resident super-smarty at WAWT – before publishing….
Finally, would you be so kind as to precisely define “climate change skeptics”? You’re not suggesting, are you, that scientists who, e.g., consider Michael Mann to be a fraud, also don’t believe that the climate actually changes, do you? Certainly, Linezen, Spencer, Shaviv, Svensmark, etc., all believe in the Ice Ages, and therefore believe that the climate does, indeed, change.
So, how should we understand this phrase “climate change skeptic”?
A video of Salby’s lecture, mentioned in The Emily Litella moment for climate science and CO2, is here.
Recommended.
I agree wholeheartedly that the decisions to stretch weather and space agency budgets further and further has led to the unfortunate but predicted situation you allude to: the inability to continue to monitor our planet with the type of fidelity required for developing civilizations. At least in the US, I don’t see this trend changing anytime soon, at least not until the point when unmonitored events occur and Americans demand to know why agencies failed. The irony won’t be lost on me or you, it seems.
Yes, scientific results have been irrefutable (scientifically speaking) for many years and will continue to grow more so with time.
Nor do I think this result, or any other combination of results, will change corporate behavior. If enough people understand the changes occurring around them as well as the larger context including uncertainty of projections, for instance, they will effect change.
Be careful what you wish for. ;)
I was directed to this the other day:
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/01/18/ocean-acidification-scare-pushed-copenhagen
It’s filled with nonsensical analysis, but most skeptical arguments are these days. Keep in mind that a solid 1/3 of Americans will believe the Heartland’s explanation because of shared ideology. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
I hope it’s okay just to drop in this Common Dreams link that just came in from Jack’s Liberty Underground newsletter; it may contain what you’ve brought us already, WeatherDem. I haven’t had time to read it, and need to get on my horse and ride my chores.
Thank for the post; we need to be aware of all this, as we are living it now, and will be for a long time. We’re in SW Colorado, and the patterns are changing mightily already.
Terrorists are using EM waves to set off earthquakes & volcanoes?
The solar system is heating up – now why has no one thought of that before? Check the graph again – solar irradiance had a positive, but very small correlation with Arctic sea ice, which means the signal just isn’t there.
Bankers want to tax CO2 emissions? Well, economists might, but I wouldn’t lump them in with bankers. Taxing CO2 (or setting up a permit system) makes basic economic sense. But then I suppose having any market for goods and services is just a bad idea…
Thanks for the advice. I am doing my own research, FWIW.
Good link – thanks for sharing.
Counterintuitively, Antarctic ice is actually benefiting from ozone depletion. To date, the CO2 signal is weaker than this. As the ozone layer is replenished through the 21st century, the signal will become clearer. Antarctic mass loss is occurring largely because of warmer water melting the ice from below, which allows for land-based ice to move faster toward the ocean.
I agree that the `catastrophic` adjective in front of climate change should be removed. Climate activists do themselves more harm than good by using such language, which is why I’ve dropped it from mine.
I also very clearly avoid `belief` in any of my discussions on the topic. Belief is something that someone holds to be true, but cannot prove if it is or not. I and others understand that anthropogenic climate change is taking place. I don’t need to think something is true that is invalidated by scientific observations.
The latest story at your link is that TEMP causes the CO2 rise and not the other way around – but as noted in the comments “if CO2 was so sensitive to temperatures (we are talking about 100ppm per 1 degree Celsius), then the ice age data stops making sense. In the ice ages, CO2 was 180ppm, while in the warmer gaps between ice ages, CO2 was 280ppm. But the temperature was 6 degrees Celsius higher. If the CO2 was as sensitive as Selby says, the difference ought to be 600ppm+- (or more), not 100″.
Seems anti-climate change folks are noting the areas where more data would be useful and claiming that without that data we can conclude nothing – and also noting all the other inputs to warming via radiation of an object like the earth and claiming effects for those other inputs, despite those other input effects having much less apparent influence and the knowledge level of those other input effects being several magnitudes less that the level of knowledge on CO2 that they complain about.
But it is an interesting link – thanks for posting it.
llie Soong (sp?) just finished a talk at heartland, and showed a graph from a paper of his that was submitted for publication. He said that N2 and O2 are also greenhouse gases, but their effect is insignificant, except at the poles. At some parts of Antarctica, though, N2 + O2 greenhouse effect is 80% of the net greenhouse effect.
If 80% of Artic warming is due to soot, and, say, 50% is from N2 + O2* of the remaining 20% of greenhouse warming, then Co2 warming would have an upper limit of 10% of the net.
* I didn’t get this 50% figure clearly from Soong’s reference, which he only showed for a few moments. Since his paper has not appeared in print, yet, he is not distributing copies of the graphs he showed, which appear in his paper. I just take this as a reasonable guess, as 50% << 80%.
Did Salby claim a constant climate sensitivity?
As Lindzen has pointed out, if you take IPCC climate sensitivity values seriously, current temperatures are too cool relative to what we would expect from values 100 years ago, so their climate sensitivity is not even consistent. Over a period of time as short as 100 years, and with a temperature change of only about 1.5 deg C, his criticism seems spot on, since the change in the temperature/time coordinates seems like a truly small blip.
You are making a similar argument, but considering climate sensitivity constant over a much larger time and temperature range. Is this just your assumption (and the commenter’s), or is it also Salby’s?
As Salby sat on his results for 6 months, and then another 6 months after showing to peers, it seems unlikely that they would not have been aware of the implications of a constant sensitivity.
Here’s a simple argument as to why climate sensitivity can’t be constant over ‘ice age time scales’:
Most CO2 that’s removed from the atmosphere (at least in our current time) gets trapped in biomass on land, not in the sea (where ‘sea’ means trapped both by sea biomass, and other chemical carbon pathways). In the depth of an ice age, what biomass is even alive at latitudes like Kansas (where a glacier reached 700,000 years ago) will not be able to pull CO2 out of air, as it’s sitting under a wall of ice. (I ignore slow diffusion).
As the glaciers retreat, there’s both more biomass, and it’s increasingly accessible to the atmosphere. CO2 deposited in the atmosphere from warming oceans thus has a greater reservoir of carbon sinks available to it.
IOW, I don’t think assuming a constant climate sensitivity to CO2 makes much sense over glacial time scales.
Well, I’m glad that you don’t use the term “catastrophic”, but guys like Hansen are still pushing this meme, even if by other language.
IMO, the greatest environmental threat to humankind over the next 100 years is Coronal Mass Ejection, on the scale of what hit us in 1859. Secondly, although the source is, ah, very questionable, some guy named Deagle keeps harping about “peak oxygen”. Basically, he’s claiming that the oceans will not be able to maintain their ability to replenish atmospheric oxygen, and humans will slowly begin to asphyxiate.
As Deagle seems very knowledgeable and honest about the unfolding disaster at Fukushima (and generally knowledgeable about a lot of technical subjects), even if he mixes questionable spiritual ideas with scientific ones, I tend to take him seriously about “peak oxygen”.
If scientists are chasing safe careers, not challenging exaggerations about Anthropogenic CO2, and don’t serve as a rational early warning system for what are much more imminent and likely dangers, then they will be exemplars of large scale human failure. If a coronal mass ejection event hits us in the next few years, and fries our power grid, those scientists will not have careers, at all, much less comfortable ones that encourage them to keep their mouths shut about politically correct misrepresentation of their own profession.
Yes, that’s a good link – thanks for sharing.
Whether the release of methane is slow or fast, the climate will obviously be impacted for a long time. The quicker it occurs, the less time ecosystems and our civilizations will have to respond. This isn’t rocket science, but treads closer to ‘catastrophic’ language that I want. The thing we know for certain is that methane would increase the amount of radiation forcing within the climate system. More observations in methane-rich areas would definitely help quantify how much is being released and how that amount is changing over time.
I think the tendency for people to use ‘catastrophic’-type language is high – I used it for a while but have stopped once I read research results on how the public interprets such language. I laud Hansen for the critical climate work he has done, but I have joined a slowly growing population of researchers/academics that recommend Hansen change his framing.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a “safe career” in science – and that comes from personal experience in professional scientific circles. I agree that CMEs pose a real threat to our technology-dependent lifestyle. That said, I think it’s up to the engineering community to inform policymakers and the public about the magnitude of that threat and the uncertainties that accompany their message. Similarly, it is incumbent upon policymakers to do something about our vulnerable infrastructure. Of course, I won’t leave out the public, who have their own responsibility to ensure scientists and engineers are working on relevant topics and hold policymakers accountable for their decisions (or lack thereof).