A trip down memory lane and a lesson on scientific integrity.
I had reason to be reviewing the history of MSU satellite retrievals for atmospheric temperatures recently. It’s a fascinating story of technology, creativity, hubris, error, imagination, rivalry, politics, and (for some) a search for scientific consilience – worthy of movie script perhaps? – but I want to highlight a minor little thing. Something so small that I’d never noticed it before, and I don’t recall anyone else pointing it out, but it is something I find very telling.
The story starts in the early 90’s, but what caught my eye was a single line in an op-ed (sub. req.) written two decades later:
… in 1994 we published an article in the journal Nature showing that the actual global temperature trend was “one-quarter of the magnitude of climate model results.”McNider and Christy, Feb 19th 2014, Wall Street Journal
Most of the op-ed is a rather tired rehash of faux outrage based on a comment made by John Kerry (the then Secretary of State) and we can skip right past that. It’s only other claim of note is a early outing of John Christy’s misleading graphs comparing the CMIP5 models to the satellite data but we’ll get back to that later.
First though, let’s dig into that line. The 1994 article is a short correspondence piece in Nature, where Christy and McNider analyzed MSU2R lower troposphere dataset and using ENSO and stratospheric volcanic effects to derive an ‘underlying’ global warming trend of 0.09 K/decade. This was to be compared with “warming rates of 0.3 to 0.4 K/decade” from models which was referenced to Manabe et al. (1991) and Boer et al. (1992). Hence the “one quarter” claim.
But lets dig deeper into each of those elements in turn. First, 1994 was pretty early on in terms of MSU science. The raw trend in the (then Version C) MSU2R record from 1979-1993 was -0.04 K/decade. [Remember ‘satellite cooling’?]. This was before Wentz and Schabel (1998) pointed out that orbital decay in the NOAA satellites was imparting a strong cooling bias (about 0.12 K/decade) on the MSU2R (TLT) record. Secondly, the two cited modeling papers don’t actually give an estimated warming trends for the 1980s and early 90s. The first is a transient model run using a canonical 1% increasing CO<sub>2</sub> – a standard experiment, but not one intended to match the real world growth of CO2 concentrations. The second model study is a simple equilibrium 2xCO2 run with the Canadian climate model, and does not report relevant transient warming rates at all. This odd referencing was pointed out in correspondence with Spencer and Christy by Hansen et al. (1995) who also noted that underlying model SAT trends for the relevant period were expected to be more like 0.1-0.15 K/decade. So the claim that the MSU temperatures were warming at “one quarter” the rate of the models wasn’t even valid in 1994. They might have more credibly claimed “two thirds” the rate, but the uncertainties are such that no such claim would have been robust (for instance, just the uncertainties on the linear regression alone are ~ +/-0.14 K/dec).
But it gets worse. In 2014, McNider and Christy were well aware of the orbital decay correction (1998), and they were even aware of the diurnal drift correction that was needed because of a sign error introduced while trying to fix the orbital decay issue (discovered in 2005). The version of the MSU2R product at the beginning of 2014 was version 5.5, and that had a raw trend of -0.01 K/decade 1979-1993 (+/- 0.18 K/dec 95% CI, natch). Using an analogous methodology to that used in 1994 (see figure to the right), the underlying linear trend after accounting for ENSO and volcanic aerosols was…. 0.15 K/dec! Almost identical to the expected trend from models!
So not only was their original claim incorrect at the time, but had they repeated the analysis in 2014, their own updated data and method would have shown that there was no discrepancy at all.
Now in 2014, there was a longer record and more suitable models to compare to. Models had been run with appropriate volcanic forcings and in large enough ensembles that there was a quantified spread of expected trends. Comparisons could now be done in a more sophisticated away, that compared like with like and took account of many different elements of uncertainty (forcings, weather, structural effects in models and observations etc.). But McNider and Christy chose not to do that.
Instead, they chose to hide the structural uncertainty in the MSU retrievals (the TMT trends for 1979-2013 in UAH v5.5 and RSS v3.3 were 0.04 and 0.08 +/- 0.05 K/dec respectively – a factor of two different!), and ignore the spread in the CMIP5 models TMT trends [0.08,0.36] and graph it in a way as to maximise the visual disparity in a frankly misleading way. Additionally, they decided to highlight the slower warming TMT records instead of the TLT record they had discussed in 1994. For contrast, the UAH v5.5 TLT trends for 1979-2013 were 0.14± 0.05 K/dec.
But all these choices were made in the service of rhetoric, not science, to suggest that models are, and had always been, wrong, and that the UAH MSU data had always been right. A claim moreover that is totally backwards.
Richard Feynman often spoke about a certain kind of self-critical integrity as being necessary to do credible science. That kind of integrity was in very short supply in this op-ed.
References
- J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, "Satellite greenhouse signal", Nature, vol. 367, pp. 325-325, 1994. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/367325a0
- F.J. Wentz, and M. Schabel, "Effects of orbital decay on satellite-derived lower-tropospheric temperature trends", Nature, vol. 394, pp. 661-664, 1998. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/29267
- J. Hansen, H. Wilson, M. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Shah, and E. Hansen, "Satellite and surface temperature data at odds?", Climatic Change, vol. 30, pp. 103-117, 1995. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01093228
Yup.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with Steve McIntyre about 13 years ago in SF AGU when he said ‘I don’t read other papers…’
It’s not quite the same as ignoring known mistakes, but it is a sophist mistake nonetheless to ignore relevant understanding to uphold ones position. Sure you can call it misleading. But others might call in just another way of lying.
Actually, the models are wrong – but the other way around! Too many parametrizations (emergent constraints) prevent them to simulate non-linear feedback cascades (e.g. compound events) through and between the systems.
Methanfeedback dead wrong, carbon-cycles-feedback dead wrong (Collapsing ecosystems like Rainforests, temperate forests, boreal forest all drying out and going up in flames much earlier than thought), vertical ocean mixing of heat dead wrong, the marine heat wave-terrestrial-water-cycle-soil-moisture-atmosphere-drying-non-linear-hot-and-dry-mutually-reinforcing-compound-event-cascade is missing in the models with the largest error being the emergence of large scales fires across the biomes with an exponentially increase of smoke emissions up into the stratosphere with CO emissions reducing the methane destruction in the atmosphere by depleting OH- radicals.
I could go on, but models are wrong in so many regards that the resulting error is immense growing with the feedbacks set into motion, which mutually reinforce each other…
After the next temperature jump we will have crossed the line and the planetary feedback cascade will overwhelm – overrun – our ability to adapt!
Said as it is
Jan
Sad. Part of me wants to say “Who cares how dishonest they were in 2014? That’s now the better part of a decade in the past. Let’s move on.”
But the sad truth is that you still see the “misleading Christy graph” cited with some regularity among certain circles–circles also unmarked, IMHO, by much evidence of integrity (intellectual or otherwise.)
It’s been a while since I have thought about the satellite temperature conundrum, and few of the acronyms threw me. Do you have a link to defined acronyms? In case others are in the same boat:
TLT = Temperature in the Lower Troposphere
TMT = Temperature in the Middle Troposphere
Gavin:
The WSJ gave Roy Spencer and John Christy Op-Ed space in part because of the virtual Op-Ed they resented in Science, in 1990:
–R.W. Spencer and J. R. Christy, “Precise Monitoring of Global Temperature Trends from Satellites , “ Science 247 (March 30, 1990): 1558 :
“Virtually everyone, children included, is concerned about global climate change and especially about the greenhouse effect. They have learned of increases in carbon dioxide. They have been told repeatedly that temperatures will increase 9’F. Political pressure is mounting to take action regardless of cost, and to take action now.”
This much is familiar to any observer within reach of the popular media. But what follows is not : “But how good is the evidence, and how likely is substantial global warming? When might it happen? Applying the customary standards of scientific inquiry, one must conclude that there has been more hype than solid facts … Modeling of global climate is largely concentrated on examining effects of doubling the atmospheric content of greenhouse gases. As might he expected, the answers they get are functions of the models they employ. The spread is from 1. 5′ to 5’C; that is, there is great uncertainty. If one examines the subject, one finds virtually unanimous agreement that the models are deficient….What have been the warming effects, if any, of anthropogenic gases? The typical answer is 0.5’C.
But the answer depends on what time interval is chosen. There was substantial increase in temperature from 1880 to 1940. However, from 1940 until the 1960s, temperatures dropped so much as to lead to predictions of a coming ice age.
New, precise satellite data raise further questions about warming. From 1979 to 1988 large temperature variability was recorded, but no obvious temperature trend was noted during the 10-year period.’ …A fashionable estimate of the time when doubling of atmospheric CO, will occur is the middle of the next century. But past predictions of energy usage have been notoriously inaccurate.. What should he the national response to the above uncertainties? … Whatever we do should he based on well-thought-out long-range goals. It should not result from a half-baked political response. ‘”
Context is important, and as surely as the Bible Belt overlaps the Oil Patch, this rhetoric still resonates like the Energizer Bunny’s drum wherever the Book of Genesis is thumped by those who view Darwin and Arrhenius with equal suspicion.
Like The Discovery Institute , The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is still producing Op-eds,
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2014/07/he-maketh-me-to-lie-down-in-green.html
But in fairness, some of their authors may entertain the view that the world is only half flat
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/02/its-still-underwater-volcanoes-all-way.html
it is disappointing that people are PAID to ‘misinform’ the public. People have to learn to change their perspective, keep an open mind and always question reports. Such reports may put near the ‘whole’ science community in doubt, and who benefits with that move? Many reports should say near the same thing vs deliver contradictions. I always ask, who is gaining $$ benefits from the misinformation?
Oil companies and nations anddictatots with huge fossil fuel assets;
MBS, Qatar/UAE, Iran, US il&gasindustr: Exxon knownliar, Chvron known to be sneakt manipulator (Ovonics), Shell , Hess, the Koch Industries;
,
jpd says; “Oil companies and nations anddictatots with huge fossil fuel assets” and whatever that means. Does jpd know this fact?
Overall, fossil fuels fell from an 88 percent share in 1988 to 85 percent today, suggesting a floor of 80 percent going into the next years if not decades. According to the BP Energy Outlook, world coal has remained steady at 28 percent of total primary energy usage, while natural gas rose to 23 percent (from 20 percent), a 15 percent gain. Oil’s market share dropped from 40 percent to 34 percent, mostly attributable to lost demand in the industrial/power plant market.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/fossil-fuels-vs-climate-politics-two-graphs/
The question that McNider and Cristy ask at the beginning of that WSJ Opinion piece is very easily answered.
Q: “But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts? ”
A: The ones writing Opinion pieces in the Murdoch media.
Years of misleading the public, and of slow-walking correction of serious errors in the models they built to create temperature data, and Christy dares drape them as the brave heroes standing for truth, against what they call the “model industry”.
They embarrass themselves throughout that piece – “From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s“. Perhaps they’d appreciate the PDF of Paul N. Edwards’ brief history of climate models – which was available before their OpEd. They would have been able to avoid that glaring factual error about their field.
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/79438/95_ftp.pdf
But they also made this claim: “In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief.” What scientists? What consensus and when? A round earth was figured out by 500 BC, and before that, there didn’t appear to be consensus – flat, or a ziggurat, or a mountain, according to this American Physical Society article from 2006: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm
Then the plain old dumb misunderstanding of “aerosol” climatologists were studying when “claiming, for instance, that an unexpected increase in the human use of aerosols had skewed the results.” It wasn’t hairspray reflecting sunlight mid-last-century, guys.
Christy and Spencer were pioneers in modeling air temperature from oxygen data taken from a constantly shifting mix of satellites and instruments. And as pioneers they made errors in the extensive models, that needed to be corrected, and which they sometimes grudgingly admitted to and fixed. McNider seems to fit the profile needed to work with them at UAH, at least from this piece. And the profile is, unfortunately for everyone, “stick with helping anti-regulatory groups no matter what the evidence says”.
So it’s particularly awful to see them say the following in that 2014 piece: “Shouldn’t modelers be more humble and open to saying that perhaps the Arctic warming is due to something we don’t understand?”
Yes – they should. Particularly ones who are somehow, almost constantly, able to tweak their code to be the big, cold outlier in all the datasets, and then claim it’s everyone else who is wrong.
All this shows is that Christy et al. have been living in a post-truth world long before Cheetolini descended the escalator to proclaim the end of democracy in the US.
We cannot forgive. We will not forget.
Look how quickly half of America has forgotten that Russia has long been regarded as is an enemy of the U.S.
You might not forget, but your memory isn’t relevant.
It seems to me that someone should toss all the software from RSS and UAH and feed the raw data into an automatic calibration system, using the extreme values due to ENSO (and perhaps AMO) as reference calibration marks. The marks provide a means of gauging the extents of the temperature signal such that the long-term trend can be better estimated. Many engineering instruments are calibrated in this way, using known reference points (BP and FP of water, for example). I have heard that the Roy Spencer Jr UAH software is a steaming pile of garbage in any case, so can’t do any worse to place an unbiased automaton in the loop instead.
Dr G.Schmidt & al
It has been quite educative on http://www.Eristische/Dialektik on how to be right when you are unright. as I have followed it the best I could also from the surrealistic point of wiew especially though Ole Humlums http://www.Climate4you , where UAH has been given together with the other institutes ratner with no direct comments.
I found that since it is mid troposphere different from ground, one simply triangulates it proportionally assuming the isotherm layer the tropopause and a straight linear lapserate. That gives the appoximate discrepancy about 40-60% lower “global warming” pro decade for UAH..
The surrealists then discuss urban heat islands at the meteorological ground stations incompetence and unreliability thus bias in the traditional meteorological data, and “Juxtering” where Juks= jokes means cheating in the poker. Especially by the fameous recent “homogenization” of data whereas homogenization and calibration of the satelite data is obviously much more tricky. demanding.
But, we also have another golden rule there about psychic projections “It takes one to know one”. Thus, allways know how to interprete that as what it actually is, namely involuntary confessions . And apply that psycho- analytically instead..
I see in recent time that the UAH- data as presented by Ole Humlum are rather along with the other institutes. They have obviously re- calibrated and re- adjusted a bit and it is accurate enough for me,
My cellar pump is saying the same. ( increase of percipitation due to a slight global warming)
The snow and ice and gardening situation alltogether is obvious. The Tyndall Arrhenius Revelle Hansen Brundtland- effect seems to become more and more real in recent time here where I live.
It can’t be a steaming pile of garbage. It gives the answers that denialists want.
As to the rest of America. They read at a grade 6 level and don’t know how to add or subtract.
So in that environment… Do you have an alternative plan?
Hr Schmidt
Congratulations wityh a quite useful verb, to “science”.
I shall use it.
That may be New England fashion. My daughter in law from Rhode Island remarked that “to quine” is to stand up at all the conferences and talk about something that does not interest anyoe anymore.
From Willard . van Orman Quine, the fameous Harward professor emeritus of systematics. Verbum to Quine!
=======0000
In fact J.R.Christy has been one of those that I could scip from PENSUM due to economy of my study capacity and interests, Whereas Ole Humlum and especially Roy Spencer have shown more interesting, giving valuable and valid information now and then that is hard to find elsewhere.
But there is a quite important rule on who not to make business and other agreements with. A basic rule that will surpize people who I cannot take for serious in business.
To “prutte” means allways to moove the premises and the results alltogether to your own favour.
A very good moslem rule to be remebered is that “wealth is to give out!”, to be a bit generous. That shows high moral, integrity, reliability, and wealth. To grab and to moove it allways to your favour is showing the opposite in business. But Satisfied clients and customers will be your very best advertisement.
We call it verbum to “Prutte”.. in business, borrowed from to make a loud flatulence.
It is TABU in business also you see, and not everyone is aware of that.
I checked up Google translate.. English say Bargaining the prices or…. data, bargaining squeezing and mooving ” objective” . measurements and Data to your favour.. In German Verhandelt über die Preise.
No, that is not ugly enough
Whereas to “Prutte”… loud farts all the way in the negotiations,………. that is ….. simply undignified.
Tell the people that.
I tell it to the surrealists downtown here, that they must not “Prutte”… on the informations and data, . because that shows them to be…. unserious, undignified, and not socially acceptible.
So we have an even better Verbum for it in Norway.
Well, what about to publish some,,,,any article about climate?
Once upon a time this was a vibrant web page.
Now? I am very sad.
People like me, interested in climatology and science in general,
must look for something somewhere else.
Why not…
Have a nice day anyway, MM
Genosse Martin M.
Consumerism and consumers judgements of vibrations in the climate dispute is hardly scientific and hardly sceptical either, ………especially not to itself…………. and hardly what we need.
Try again.
Better luck next time. Good night!
Martinn asked:
Two aspects to climate science:
1. Science of AGW, GHG, and Climate Change. IMO well understood, not interesting, consensus is that climate sensitivity has been essentially locked since 1979
2. Science of natural climate variations. IMO no understanding, very interesting, no consensus as viewpoints vary wildly between chaotic, random, and externally forced mechanisms.
Count me in on the latter.
In the last few days, there’s been lots of activity relating to forecasters predicting an eminent El Nino arriving in the next few months. No real science on this, as many of the forecasters are simply comparing current conditions to past conditions and using that as a gauge of plausibility.
So is the climate actually so chaotic that it’s hopeless to make any progress? Or is the state-of-the-art in geophysics modeling just that primitive or too inscrutable (a la ML or enormous GCMs) to provide any simplifying breakthrough?
There really should be many more posts on this topic, which classifies as an unsolved scientific research problem.
Hr P.P (@whut)
So you hope for a simplifying breakthrough on the predictability of Nino and Nina?
Try Google translate from Danish on
“Mange ting man har besvær med
klares bedst ved at las vær med!
SANN! ”
(I tried. Exellent. )
“SANN”, is the traditional AMEN after performace on nthe stages,, in the folklores.
Wherewfor I use it quite often here.
I looked into your speculations again, and there is really much interesting material there.
I worked very hard on the same in wind instrument acoustics by online oscilloscopy and servography and did actually find a very efficient way through it also, being highly trained on tricky complex radio oscillators from before.
And I have also seen psevdo- scientific speculations on oscillating air in tubes and on radioactive thermic and white noise where they never got any way with it.
In my opinion because they stated the problems and asked the questions categorically wrong.
I will not judge for your ENSO because some of your curves in detail are obviously similar to what I have seen oscilloscopically on flute sounds and in radio oscillators, the OOOOO),…. ÅÅÅÅÅÅ….. and ØØØØØ-… wovels. ( Helmholz phonetics) O = Pure sinus, Å= Octavial, and Ø= Duodecimal vowels.
Telling of no partials, Pair numbered partials, and odd numbered partials.
It is obviously there, here and there, in your signals. The sea is talking.
But not stable from eternity to eternity like in cunningly made and moderately blown organ pipes. It vanishes and changes after some dozens of periods. It looks like partial beat,
There is Wolf im Ton, in the Pacific ocean.
The problems or questions should be stated on solvable form, I have found. Else simply skipped.
Not everyone is aware of that.
But that is what http://www.Piet/Hein wrote in Danish d/o.
The deal about responding to the above stream-of-consciousness comment is that you are free to interpret it in any which way you want.
The aspect missing is that analyzing natural climate variations is not just some naive Fourier series fitting exercise of arbitrary sinusoids that one can decode from a spectrum analyzer. That’s not really science but more like reverse engineering.
The science comes about when one considers that any forcing has to be highly constrained in amplitude and phase based on other measured physical phenomenon instead of just assuming an arbitrary Fourier series. The science also comes from the many research papers that are discovering that internal waves along the equatorial thermocline are >100 times larger in scale than on the surface (and less in geographic locations away from the equator). The science is asking what does that imply for well-characterized tidal forcing when it is applied to the thermocline? And if we apply it during the seasonal transitions when the theromocline is most metastable what would that do?
When you do just one step in this process — calibrating the tidal forcing from the earth’s rotation data and neglect (for the moment) the complexities of the fluid dynamical response — one can see the correlation already.
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2855758/219879604-d1a19db3-3b78-486d-86e6-6a8943149810.png
wow.
Hr. P Pukite:
I wrote it to Rasmus Benestad. We are told by qvasi- scientific experts that any function or curve can be fully described as the sum of superposing singular sinus curves.
Which is not true at all.
Absolute silence and white noise both fall out of possible fourier analysis. And for most other curves and forms, it is also quite unpractical clumsy and … inadequate.
I used the prophile of Oslo city or Manhattan as a best example of what ought not to be approached by Fourieranalysis. Rather go to the tourist office and get a map from there as the best scientific theory at hand.
But on the other hand, I am a psofessional expert on complex oscillators as a musical wind instrumjent scientist and successful maker. Having also used the RC couppled oscilloscope and Bruel & Kjærs fourier- Helmholz` sound spectrography.
But there are important deviations and technical physical exeptions. Tone- breakers and transcients , and partial beat, wolf im ton, rumble burble in the tones. That must be identified, understood, described, and cured as what it is, by other means.
Engine noises, rumbles splashes rattles,…. tempeste di mare by Vivaldi, storm at sea,…is intensionally harmkonic but at the same time also intensionally chaotic and noisy mixed up..
I have once seen tripple hurricane at sea in Puttgarten Germany. The very sea was just a green foam with hardly any waves to be seen., And on land, all water flying through the air. , All small pools on land blown empty. Then forget Sinus and Fourier and “harmonics” It enters a physical state more close to termic noise. when Allah really is Akhbar.
In Florida, cars blow to sea and large ships up on land, on land, crocodiles and rattlesnakes
are flying through theb air. Asphalt blow off the streets in large flakes and into the bushes. I have seen that on TV even from Norway. Then Fourier can go home.
. It is important in car mechanic diagnosis to hear and understand the basic difference between rhytmic and a- rhytmic “fusk” failures. To identify the physical causes for the errors.
Rhytmic has got mechanic and electric causes. ( a failing sparkplug , an untight exhaust valve…) But a- rhytmic is viscous. That is the carburetor, gasoline and air. Or viscous rubber, a flat- tyre. Conscious pattern recognition, you see.
Maestro in the orchestra and the chief engineer must hear and identify , tackle, and correct all this.
GAS is a flemish word. They say CH for G. That became CHAOS in Paris at the academy..
There are no fouriers and reliable rhytms and sinuses in CHAOS.
Fourier was a quite ingenious and quite incureable pythagorean. Hermann Helmholz was especially worshipful under Fouriers theory “Die Theorie!” he swrote, again and again having got fouriers dissolution. on his brains.
But even Helmholz , allthough a polymath, and pioneer on phonetics, was not omniscient.
“Waves are reflected on dimensional boarders between media of different wave mechanical conductivity. Theese dimensional boarders, point line surface…. according to the nature of the wave, are end- conditions of the reflected wave.”
AMEN!
That is V. Bjerknes`fameous theorem for Heinrich Herz` antennas.
Bjerknes went further and founded the fameous Bjerknes- center in Bergen. Weather forecast and climate research especially in the north atlantic and Barents sea. Who were the very best on radio weather forecast at sea together with the Danes.
. His son Jacob Bjerknes emigrated to California and discovered the ENSO fror you. After Carl Anton Bjerkines his grandfather fameous Water- bath that took Gold in Paris in 1886.
3rd gen. Bjerknes trained to this, took the largest of all earthly wavy water- baths in the fameous Bjerkines- style..
Thus, further along with Vilhelm Bjerknes, try and understand the barrier between material thermo molecular and electronic moovement and electro magnetic radiation is also a reality. And will represent a macro- wavy- end- condition.
Where waves are reflected, at the dimensional barrier of ….. square of space! the R^6 reality in liquid water.. See the Nobel price of physics by J. van der Waals 1910.
When mechanical wavy moovement goes across a 6- dimensional barrier into heat you see, and back again interfering with what comes in. . And so it is in the Pacific also.
We find phase- coupple and coherence by weak forces both in the air and in the radio transmittersand receivers of molecular material. That ruins the very appliciability and validity of “linear” and so called “Classical” physics.
As in the radio devices and in the pnevmatic oscillators. And in the clouds and atmospheres.
We find Tempeste di mare and white breakers, green foams together with laminar and coherent wavy currents all the way… where Fouriers thoughts run into chaos and becomes less appliciable, no longer phaenomenologically congruent and fruitful..
Therefore
Mange ting man har besvær med
klares bedst ved at las vær med.
Niels Bohr also said the same. “We must resign on all attempts,…” and then told rather how to do it the practical way.
Again, I don’t necessarily follow all your analogies but I try my best.
I recently commented on a Copernicus open-science research article on atmospheric cycles that was undergoing a review, making a suggestion to consider analyses I had presented and published 4 years ago and also prior to that. See initial comment CC1 in the discussion page and the response:
https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2022-792/#discussion
Thought that was that and was happy to see that the authors indicated they would revise the manuscript and perhaps advance understanding. But then 3 days ago, the editor interceded and essentially demanded that the authors not cite my research work. Apparently, the authors were influenced by the demand, as they immediately removed my cite and replaced it with a citation to a review article that the editor preferred. The discussion on the article was then closed.
Part of the backstory was that I spent several hours working with the primary author as they worked to replicate my analysis, sending emails back and forth several times. Foolishly, I thought that was the way to do open science. Yet, in reality that is “how not to science” according to the Copernicus editor, who evidently prefers to kick the can down the road.
At least it’s all in the open and you can read the full discussion and try to defend the editor’s decision making. A few years ago this would be a private back-room discussion, so I guess that’s progress ;)
Hr P.Pukite
Wherever anyone mentions a cycle in the climate, I get sceptic because I know that fameous argument, and mostly ridicule them.
Because
It is not that easy to repeat the success of Milancovic.
That cycle is hardly more than a rumor and a “meme” and a popular selling word among
consceited surrealists in the climate.
They lacki the words. Rumle burble sloshing splashing ande so on to better descfribe natural behaviours and moovements, functions. And call it a cycle and norhing but a cycle. But you do not get well on with engines and currents and feedbacks and noise and rattles that way, especially not in the climate and in the waterfalls and rivers , in the atmospheres and clouds, in the wind instruments and the natural voices, and in the climate.
It is naive and uneducated classic reductionism in the geophysics. and illiterate, snobbish analphabetism in the linguistics also.
It is para- and quasi- science.
I also approach it from the harmonic side and have great success there. Because I also know how to approach it from the noisy and the cathastrophical and chaotic side.
We have a worst example here in Norway, Harald Yndestad, a Luna- tic in the climate dispute salong with Nicola Scafetta.
Pukite
I saw your several references.
Yes, I also trap and skin the fur of SENSOR behind the iron curtain, tan it and mount it issue it and announce it, , and sell it against hard cash on the free market.
Rule:
SENSOR behind the iron curtain is mad and drunk. Wherefore he shall just have rat poison in cheaqpest paper to eat, sent to him by express registered mail.
Then he dies slowly and painfully.
Much wants more and he is allready eating like a maniac.
It works each time!
That is “DIE PRAGER PILLE” as invented and instructed by UNIVERSITAS CAROLINVM IV in Praha, the good old days.
That is how to science in any peoples republic. / any closed society and burglarshop with practical monopoly..!
Umberto Eco and Vaclav Havel published on it.
Carbomontanus , Why don’t you try submitting a discussion comment with that writing style while reviewing a Copernicus paper? I wonder if they would appreciate your literary flourishes and metaphor construction. Report back here how it works out.
https://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/notes_for_the_submission_of_interactive_comments.html
@ Pukite
Can anyone come in and “Peer rewiew” a Copernicusn paper anonymeously to decide over research and science and the authors of their own research?
Then it is really no wonder.
A next aspect is that it collides with the UN declaration of Human Rights articles 20.2, 26, and 27.
I have an unpublished project that may be rather radical.
I believe that the harmonic coherent Fourier-Helmholz sound spectrum in pnevmatic and other oscillators has got quantum mechanical microchosmic material causes because it stays absolutely stable coherent to macro- changes of the endconditions
Thus I can tune and model and design soundcolours artistically in musical instruments the way one tunes and refines radio devices and turbines and airplanes, being fameous for it.
I hav made an experimental pnevmatic oscillator that does not exchange gas with its environment, where input sinus electric drive adapts automatically to the resonator groundtone resonance. And tried air, butane gas, and argon in it. Air ande argon shows only difference of pitch and hardly of higher partial amplitudes. But Butane is like having oil on water. The higher partial frequencies are damped..
To proove quantum mechanical numeral principles must be shown experimentally, and I have not found out yet how that can be done. I thought by Argon similar to Helium, with no rotational and vibrational thermal modules, but argon behaves quite similar to air..
But it is obvious that I am dealing with sound dispersion at audible frequencies because soundspeed,, lamda times ny, especially of the partials is totally rotten in space inside of a strong sound source.
Thus, who states Lambda times ny is C inside and even near to the orchestra and calculates with that, states and calculates wrong!
Which is a very handy rule of when to put any treatise of musical acoustics back to where it belongs, in the library dust. And you loose nothing. Lambda and ny must be tuned apart like in the radio..
Lambda times ny being constant in space rules only assymptotic for absolute silence or far enough away from the orchestra out in empty air.
Moral. Never multiply lambda with ny in the orcestra!
C for soundspeed depends both on frequencies and amplitudes in strong sound sources.
The reasom why you can “blow up” a note to a bit higher is that soundspeed inctreases by amplitude.
Lightgspeed is not constant either inside of a molecule or inside a radio device or inside of an atomic bomb 0r inside of a Supernova flash or inside of BIG BANG.. But stable enough for laser and radar measurement in space. Lightspeed flickers and shivers allready in thin molecular matter. (thermo- flickering)
That of the helmholz- spectrum having quantum mechanic causes is the most radical of all my scientific opinions. And able to live with it.
And Copernicus may need a long treatment with DIE PRAGER PILLE before I can send in that.
“I have an unpublished project that may be rather radical.”
Carbo:
I comment here (at RC) regularly to see if there is some interest in certain climate science topics, beyond what I can reach with my own blog https://GeoEnergyMath.com. Perhaps try commenting over there if you think you have some interesting ideas — at the limited rate here at RC, it may take months before I can figure out your premise. You mention a parameter “ny” — does that refer to frequency as in the greek letter nu? Since you mention Lambda also, as in wavelength .
BTW, there is another long-running open climate science forum called the Azimuth Project, but the owner is shutting that down in May.
Hr Pukite
Let it not be too long now but remark what I stated above,
Vilhem Bjerkines general theorem for Herz`antennas, where he worked in the lab. On the principle of the ECCHO, on RE- SONANCE ( what`s in a word) and of the nature and forms of wave- mechanical end- condithions reflextion interference and possibl physically phase- couppled, coherent, stable, standing wave systems. that will amplify in the field.
Where the square of space, the s1quare of molar heat (P + alpha / Vm^2) (Vm-beta) = nRT is also a wave- mechanial barrier between media of different wave mechanical conductivity.
Bjerknes`principle, that is quite especially fruitful in wave and oscillation research, is unluckily lessn known among specialists who are sworn to so called “classical physics” and to the mass point particle daising or cycling Sinus in the absolute linear elastic spiral spring. And furter sworn to statistic coinfridence in virtual reality on the desktop computer and on the tribal specialist snobbish fora and websites.
Any coherent partials in exact pythagorean Fourier Helmholz- whole numeral distance cannot exist and show up in the chaotic stormy waters and stay glued coherent for a while, without contact and wave-mechanical reflectin from van der Waals fameouis square ot the molar heat, the R^6- dimension. between molecular moovement and electromagnetic radiation.
The same shows ut even in our moons and pluto charons phase- couppled roration by weak forces that can slip, as in the galaxies. Not just in the horns and trumpets, the radio receivers and transmitters, and in the water. baths and the pacific ocean.
Both Fourier and He4lmholz and Chladi remain further helpless without it.
So I believe that is where youn should rather try and dig.
there is definitely partial coherence coming and going in the CHAOS of your systems, I saw it on your graphs. and have seen it before on the oscilloscope. I managed to fish and filter it out and show it on servography in the lab, by intelligent new electroacoustical design, not by laptop statistics and confidence.
And to utilize it commercially, sell the scientific artisan products on the free marked and win the first prices of baroque music by it.
A better understanding of Haendels wind- sonata and Vivaldis tempeste di mare aqnd the fourv seasons in the pacific ocean will surely help weather forecast, agriculture, and shipping also.
But such as Nicola Scafetta is deeply unquaqlified on necessary molecular and microchosmic physics and end condition premises also in microchosmos. Scafetta relates it boldly to solar flares and to Saturnus. instead, where there is no hope for popular
new age zodiacal astrology.
Richard Lindzen is struggeling in vain the same area being less aquainted to chemical analytical thought , to pythagoreanism, and to due critical scolastics of science. .
Pukite
Correcture, Van der Waals square of the molar volume.
Hope you get it
It is the sticky glue-forces and slime forces of matter, its co- hesion ald slippery repulsion, that is of electrostatic and electromagnetic nature.
It is about the wet- ness of water.
Carbo said
As you suggested earlier, oscillations seem to be the last refuge of the scoundrel, ever since the days of the epicycle. Yet, behaviors such as ocean tides are 99% comprised of the analysis of cycles. The 1% left is tropical storm forecasting and perhaps secular sea-level rise prediction. And as I said earlier, we can’t predict an El Nino until it is on top of us, and once again that is proving true this season — so 99% of extended ENSO prediction is worthless.
Now consider what Richard Lindzen has published in the past; on separate occasions he has stated: “For oscillations of tidal periods the nature of the forcing is clear” [1] and “it is unlikely that lunar periods could be produced by anything other than the lunar tidal potential” [2]. There are many paths that tidal periods can take and emerge in behaviors such as ENSO and QBO, but it seems to me that the fear of being accused of epicycle curve-fitting is stronger than taking a chance to see what comes out of the mix, simply by applying the math derived from non-linear dynamics and physical aliasing, to name but two overlooked approaches. The fact is that even though scientists may be uneasy about going down this direction, machine learning and AI tools such as ChatGPT will cheerfully try anything and neural nets are non-linear beasts. You see, machines and robots, unlike humans, don’t get embarrassed by making mistakes along the way.
To think that some are taught that making mistakes is “how not to science”.
References
[1] RS Lindzen, “Planetary waves on beta-planes”, Monthly Weather Review, 1967
[2] RS Lindzen, S Hong, “Effects of mean winds and horizontal temperature gradients on solar and lunar semidiurnal tides in the atmosphere”, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 1974
Carbo said:
It’s commonplace to find cryptic prognosticators on the internet. These people have some vague idea that isn’t clearly articulated or they claim that their lack of applied math skills prevents them from demonstrating how well the idea works. When offered help by someone else with the requisite math or programming ability, they suddenly become quiet. Many times they remain anonymous so their credentials remain murky. Many times they claim that since English isn’t their primary language that they are being misunderstood. They have no blog or GitHub site to refer to, with comments on someone else’s forum (like this blog) as their only trail of activity. Citing any form of peer-reviewed work is impossible given their anonymity.
They pose concepts as riddles or clues, as if the rest of us think this is some kind of game.
Hr P P(@ Whut)
You have something there 12 mars at 1223.
“…. that internal waves along the eqvatorial thermocline are > 100 times larger in scale than on the surface….”
That resembles my basic engineering problem when it came to the recorders. Those invisible and hidden waves inside those long tubes… where I also saw the importance,
Leonardo scrive::
“La musica est figurazione delle cose invisibili..”
Which later became my personal trademark and slogan. Sverre Kolbergs fameous FIGURAZIONE articles.
I had disqualified the very library of musical acouistics for being pre- oscilloscopic and pre- microhonic, believing that air is a dry sandstorm with spiral springs between the grains, so dry since it was consceived, that even the ETER has evaporated since then..
Their Psi and C models of mooving mass point particles under minutely rational endconditions showed obviously erroreous and misleading..
So I went to http://www.Helmut/Ormestad , Pianoforte, and Maestro at the institute orchestra of physics. Who took the problem.
“Have you heard of the sond- microphone?” he asked. No , I had not.
So I went home and made a sond microphone, that is . a thin tube that leads further through silicon rubber into a box with rockwool and a microphone. It detects the oscillating sound pressure at the tip of that thin brass tube.
But I improoved it further also by Post- apollo IC analogue devices, a sharp, tuneable frequency filter “reaction receiver” principle,… AC-DC- rectification and a superbe home made servograph. . And got a bunch of sevvographic online maps of singular partials inside of a machine blown Moeck Rottenburg recorder.
On examining those servographic maps, that were sowing obvious sound dispersion confirming what I also saw on the oscilloscope, I got a next really ingenious idea, the flute- fish.
That is a fishform piece of wood on a steel wire that is mooved up and down in the flutes and otyher wind instruments when blowing the notes. Then you hear it all and get able to carve and shape those flutes from inside by irons (spoonreamers) that must be specially made for it by blacksmith tecniques. That is also baroque.
By that, I could train and carve and sculpure and finely shape it the FIGURAZIONE delle cose invisibili way to highest, fine musicalo accuracy that wins against the alternatives, in interrnational musical competitions.
It looks to me that you have such a FIGURAZIONE problem in the thermocline at eqvator and need a sondmicrophone with tuneable frequency filter for the partials and with mapping of it for analysis and improovemet of thought ……. up to Leonardi and Stradivari masterclass quality … also in the pacific ocean. To find the real causes and forms of Tempeste di Mare and Le quattro stagioni in the pacific ocean.
Colleague Bob Marvin from uphill Maine USA has also invented the flutefish independent of me.
That looks like a swimjming sperm in the tubes so SENSOR may get upset. But that is how to science when even the field parameters are oscillating…
Osceanology is properly enlighted and instrumented musical acoustics in molecular material fields with end conditions, rather than blind and deaf desctop computer statistics with confidence. It is about conscious pattern reconition and true physical cause recognition first of all, before trying to “model” it..
The real causes are:
1, Causa materiale (=Fire Earth Water and Air)
2, Causa efficiens ( = the sun and the moon)
3, Causa formale (=the sea serpent, a quite large and wild dragon)
4, Causa finale. (=for what purpose, why are we doing it?)
The Argus sondes may be a first , post Apollo approach to Tempeste di mare and the four seasons, on responsible Leonardo and NASA- level. .
I found the flute-dragon that explains it very much better than the alternatives, that were a dry material particle daising sinus in a linear elastic steel spring
Oscillating air It is not Newtons craddle. It swings rather like an air molecule. showing strong microchosmic dispersion at audible frequencies by van der Waals forces..
Also be aware that sub- harmonics are hardly phase- couppled, they are not showing physical coherence by macro- conjugated weak van der Waals forces that can slip. and break into unptredictable chaos. But the same is a characteristic physical property of higher harmonic frequencies that moove laminar coherently and can slip into breakers rumble and chaos. And then raise up again from anew out of step with the former. ” sound figure”.
Nicola Scafetta and Harald Yndestad were misconsceived on this, as luna- tics by folklore thus ended hopelessly up at Saturnus.
Richard Lindzen can simply be judged as to whether he believes in Multiple Phase Couppled Harmonical and Coherent Periods…….
……… or rather believes in MPCH&CP Frequencies,…
……….for his Rossby-waves.
Moonshine and sunshine is what causes the peculiar marine and earthly sexy biorythms through conscious nervous awareness.
Not lunar and solar classic mechanical attraction and gravitation.
Because, it aint not that easy to repeat the success of Newton either,
especially not when Robert Boyle and J. van der Waals`gas- laws were not on their Pensa as they came to pnevmatics acoustics and hydraulics
Gavin, Thanks for bringing attention of our WSJ Op-Ed to your RealClimate readers. Here is a link your readers can access. https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/mcnider/WSJ/WSJ_McNider_Christy_2014.pdf
As we noted in the op-ed, the real problem is that most models currently significantly over-estimate warming in the deep atmosphere in the tropics but most also significantly under-estimate warming at high latitudes. See Swanson 2013 GRL. We must be careful about our projected confidence in the current science. That was the real intention of the 2014 WSJ Op-Ed.
Given your critique I might have wanted to provide greater details but I stand behind the piece completely. Here I want to correct things you said in your blog. I won’t comment much on your reanalysis of our 1994 Nature paper since it is not a period analysis we explicitly did (1979-1993) now that newer versions of the UAH TLT data set are standard.
[Response: Seriously? Your claim in 1994 was incorrect though possibly inadvertent – but you were notified at the time in the correspondence published in Climatic Change. Yet despite that, and the multiple corrections that were made to the TLT record since then, you won’t comment ‘much’? LOL. – gavin]
However, we have completed other analyses 1979-2017 (see Christy and McNider 2017 Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences) using v5.6 and v6.0, (Christy et al., 2011, Spencer et al. 2018). Ironically our 36-year analysis using v5.6 and v6.0 came up with the same trend as in the 15-year analysis in 1994. I would note that your ENSO and volcanoes residual appears to have greater variability than in our original paper 1994 paper and certainly in our 2017 paper. Thus, not sure if your techniques are fully removing the variance so can’t comment on your trend.
[Response: It wasn’t my choice of method, merely a replication of what you thought was sensible back then. Feel free to ask Nature to retract it if you now feel it is inappropriate. ]
As far as the one quarter statement, we used the data (as you referenced Manabe et al. (1991) and Boer et al. (1992). ) to make the statement. In 1994 we did not have Hansen’s 1995 paper. In the 2014 op-ed we simply refer to our one quarter warming finding in 1994.
[Response: Precisely. A statement that in 2014 you knew was wrong. That. You. Knew. Was. Wrong. Are you perhaps not understanding my point here? ]
In the op-ed we simply said, “As the nearby graph shows, the disparity between the predicted temperature increases and real-world evidence has only grown in the past 20 years.” If you look at the chart accompanying the op-ed in 1993 the absolute difference in model temperatures and satellite observed temperatures were of order 0.20 -.25C. By 2013 in the chart the absolute difference is 0.45-0.50C. I don’t see anything wrong with the statement that the disparity has only grown in the past 20 years in our graph.
[Response: As I have already demonstrated in excruciating detail, your graph is highly misleading and designed to grossly exaggerate the difference between the models and observations. I’m happy to point you to more reasonable ways to investigate the discrepancies and the possible reasons for them, but that has to start with being honest about the analysis. ]
Also, you seem to assert that the UAH MSU data used in the graph was not current to 2014 with decay and drift corrections – it was!
[Response: No. This is a misreading. It is precisely because you had updated it that your claims about the 1994 comment were false.]
You also fail to say that we included both UAH and RSS satellite data sets and two rawinsonde sets. So, the plot is not just a UAH MSU tropospheric data set.
[Response: Which you averaged to hide the fact that they differed by a factor of two in their trends.]
You also assert that we tried to obfuscate the orbital decay and/or orbital drift problems in the 2014 op-ed. Neither was an issue in 2014 or when we wrote the 1994 paper.
[Response: Again, you seem to fail reading comprehension. ]
After it was brought to their attention by Frank Wentz in 1998, Spencer and Christy admitted the orbital decay should be considered and promptly made the correction. Unknown to Wentz however was that Christy and Spencer were dealing with another correction due to the variations of the temperature of the instrument itself, also due to orbital drifts influencing the shadowing effects of sunlight on the sensors (see Christy et al 2000 J. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology). This correction partially offset the orbital decay correction so that the net effect on trends was within the published margin of error. Similarly, the orbital drift problem, which affected only one of the UAH temperature products, was resolved in 2005 (Christy and Spencer, 2005, Science). This is the way science is supposed to work with independent investigators testing each other’s data products!
[Response: No mention of when the wrong sign of diurnal drift adjustment crept in? Hmm.. ]
Note, while I initiated the MSU tropospheric temperature work of Spencer and Christy and continue my interest, I have not been involved in the details of the follow-on processing.
We actually did submit an update to the 1994 paper to Nature in 2011 using the latest MSU TLT that had the decay and drift corrections, as well as other improvements, and we now had over 30 years of data. So contrary to your assertion, we did fully understand the MSU history when we wrote the 2014 op-ed and had results in hand.
[Response: You realise that makes it worse, right?]
Unfortunately, reviewers (probably you or your friends) rejected the paper.
[Response: As the kids today are fond of saying, pics or it didn’t happen.]
Then you and Ben Santer and others had a paper published two years later in Nature (Santer et al. 2014 NatureGeoscience) which essentially carried out the same analysis that we had in our 2011 submittal and was patterned after our 1994 paper. You and Santer even used our UAH MSU data in the paper. We note that you and Santer never even referenced our 1994 paper which laid out the template for doing volcano and ENSO corrections. So, your later comment about us lacking self-critical integrity is certainly ironic if not fully laughable. For you now to pay so much attention to the 1994 paper even redoing the analysis speaks volumes about the lack of even referencing it in your 2014 paper.
We eventually had our update to the 1994 paper published (Christy and McNider, Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences) using v5.6 and v6.0, both improved over the old v5.5 used in your recent 2023 post.
To the bigger picture. A lot of what you include here in this blog is mostly nit-picking. You don’t like John’s graphs (see your link frankly misleading way.) But, even after all your fiddling your plots show that most models consistently over-estimate the warming of the troposphere. Seems your goal is only to have at least one model overlap with the observations.
[Response: You are so sad. I used v5.5 in this post because that was the version used in 2014. All current comparisons use the latest versions from everyone. I just want to have an honest conversation about what the issues are so that they can be addressed. Lying about the differences makes that impossible. You might even like our most recent paper that looks at a bunch of issues in GISS ModelE that make a difference to the comparison (forcings, model top, initial conditions etc.). ]
However, I guess you do know that these overlapping models have the smallest Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (see McKitrick and Christy 2020 AGU Earth and Space Science.) You are probably not going to like the new NOAA Satellite data set by Zou et al 2023 JGR-Atmosphere which produces a slightly smaller trend than UAH’s.
[Response: Surprise! I’m actually the first person whose included their new data version in the comparisons. And also perhaps a surprise, I’ve written high profile commentaries declaring the end of model democracy in CMIP6 (Hausfather et al, 2021) as well as participating in efforts to better constrain climate sensitivity from observations (Sherwood et al, 2020). Try to keep up!]
This finding of models warming significantly faster than observations in the middle and upper troposphere is pervasive in the literature. (See references in McKitrick and Christy 2020 ). Even your Santer et al. 2014 shows the over-warming and blames it on unknown natural variability or errors in forcing. My colleagues Christy and McKitrick have examined trends and comparisons between models and all observations for both the middle and upper troposphere. McKitrick and Christy 2018 (AGU Earth and Space Science) using CMIP5 models and rawinsonde data sets found shows that all models warm more rapidly than observations and in the majority of individual cases the discrepancy is statistically significant. McKitrick and Christy 2020 (AGU Earth and Space Science) examined CMIP6 models. They found for lower-troposphere and mid-troposphere layers both globally and in the tropics, all 38 models overpredict warming in every target observational analog (they included satellite data sets, reanalysis data sets, rawinsonde data sets) in most cases significantly so, and the average differences between models and observations are statistically significant. In keeping with the flat earther theme in the op-ed, I think you are acting like the flat earthers by being the last to concede models over-warm the troposphere.
[Response: Who are you arguing with? I’ve been producing graphs quantifying the differences for years. I have co-authored multiple papers that have tried to improve the analyses of these differences – through correcting the flawed statistics of your co-author (Santer et al. 2008), and including comparisons to UAH MSU data in our model description papers (Miller et al, 2020) and doing a fuller exploration of model structural uncertainty for the trends for the surface, MSU and SSU records (Casas et al, 2023). But your insistence that there is no structural uncertainty in the satellite retrievals, and that the differences are way larger than they really are, blinds you to the far more prosaic likely reasons for the discrepancies.]
One other thing. You said we embarrassed ourselves on about climate modeling beginning in the 1980s. I set on the same floor as Warren Washington at NCAR in the early 1970’s so I know all about the history of climate modeling development. But you can see the context i was writing was about forecasts using full 3-d climate models to estimate impact of CO2 not the beginnings of climate models themselves.
[Response: You embarrassed yourselves in 2014 by being unable to stop with the talking points that are friendly to WSJ oped audience despite you knowing that they were untrue. And you continue to do so by completely failing to come out of your partisan hole. It’s a shame. ]
RM: most models currently significantly over-estimate warming
BPL: Look again.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL085378
https://www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-sea-climate.html
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/
Gee, Dr. McNider, no one seems to agree with you.
@BPL I believe McNider was referring to the temperature of the “deep atmosphere” rather than the surface — something that even Gavin noted for the TMT.
The ironic part of the McNider WSJ OpEd is that they write about scurvy developed during long ocean voyages as some kind of analogy. In fact tragedies at sea formed the basis for the concept of Murphy’s Law (check the Wikipedia entry). When humans meddle with the environment — both atmosphere and ocean — anything that could go wrong likely will go wrong. And that is the unintended consequence of emitting all those GHGs over the past century plus.
Mr. McNider, don’t credit Gavin for :
I said that, and I still do because I disagree where you just said:
Here’s what you said:
That’s what you said to a non-science audience, in 1994, in an op-ed in a newspaper hostile to climate science. You didn’t seem to include your team in “spectaculary wrong”, either. You were the knights in shining armor or something.
But thanks for the link to a PDF of your op-ed, since the WSJ lost your chart. The chart is missing an important attribution, though. It claims sources are in BAMS State of the Climate 2012 but that report has no chart or graph of climate models, nor even a mention of IPCC or CMIP in their table of acronyms. I looked.
So two more questions, please:
1 – what 102 models were you averaging for that chart?
2 – were those models projecting surface temperature instead of middle troposphere?
Hindsight’s useful, and by your 2014 piece, NOAA’s Climate at a Glance showed decadal surface warming since 1978 of +0.15°C. Extended through now it’s +0.18°C/decade, and that’s probably a lot more statistically firm than the 15-year trend of noisy atmospheric satellite data available in 1994.
Last bit from 1994:
“catastrophic”, of course, is an emotion word, not a climate word. Remove that and you say that climate computer models are built “almost” entirely by scientists who agree with evidence regarding greenhouse gases. Well, Exxon’s team looked into it and told senior management that in the very early 1980s, and models even in the 1960s were clear about CO2 trapping heat – and predicted the Arctic amplification, stratospheric cooling and intensification of the hydrological cycles that are all observed now.
Gravity models probably show the same correlation – I bet most are made by folks who “believe” in gravity.
@G.A. Schmidt & Richard McNider say: ” It`s a shame ”
– But that was a successful performance about “how not to science”
I fear that neither of the two contenders will ever find the ass fold of the earth to produce a real and ultimate global warming temperature signal and statement.
As mentioned elsewhere, this would require decades of measurement series at all depths of the oceans and earth’s crust. In the extremely turbulent atmosphere, temperature measurement to determine the exact global warming makes only limited sense due to the comparatively low heat capacity. The easiest way is to determine volume losses in the cyrosphere, which of course is not sufficient on its own.
Climate models with the latest software and ever-improving satellite-based observations are only of limited help if analog understanding of climate influences still shows deficits.
You can see a first example here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/summary-for-policymakers/figure-spm-2
A full 35 years after the IPCC was founded, you can see for the first time in the graph that the IPCC has come to the conclusion that irrigation and land use change have been attributed a small cooling effect of ~ 0.1°C since 1850.
Apart from the fact that I myself doubt the value shown, I ask you the questions:
– Why the IPCC’s late realization that our planet is water-cooled?
– Above all, even in 2022, the graphics still lack the inner logic and the warming converse conclusion that humans have not only been draining the land since 1750. Do you both have an explanation for that?
It’s a shame! … and a good example “how NOT to science”
The 2nd example for “how NOT to science”:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/01/2022-updates-to-the-temperature-records/
GA Schmidt says: – ” What influence does ENSO really have?
It’s well known (among readers here, I assume), that ENSO influences the interannual variability of the climate system and the annual mean temperatures. El Niño events enhance global warming (as in 1998, 2010, 2016 etc.) and La Niña events (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022 etc.) impart a slight cooling. ”
However, the IPCC, together with me, is of the opposite opinion. Three times I did Dr. Gavin Schmidt drew attention to the misleading formulation that GMST should not be confused with GW. – No reaction. The phrase could give many thousands of readers a wrong idea about ENSO.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter07.pdf
7.2.2.1 Changes in Earth’s Top-of-atmosphere Energy Budget
…For example, globally, the reduction in both outgoing thermal and reflected solar radiation during La Niña conditions in 2008/2009 led to an energy gain for the climate system, whereas enhanced outgoing thermal and reflected solar radiation caused an energy loss during the El Niños of 2002/2003 and 2009/2010. …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:Earth's_heating_rate_since_2005.jpg
The question of which changes in the climate system lead to high or low energy uptake of the climate system is one of the most exciting questions that climate science has to answer. Attributing the cause solely to the greenhouse effect or CO2, as it is perceived by the interested, broad public, may not be the correct answer as observations over the last 2 decades indicate that the combined radiative forcing from the GHE has not changed significantly. Which is not to say that efforts to emit less CO2 should slack off.
Richard McNider says
10 MAR 2023 AT 9:31 PM
“As far as the one quarter statement, we used the data (as you referenced Manabe et al. (1991) and Boer et al. (1992). ) to make the statement. In 1994 we did not have Hansen’s 1995 paper. ”
But you did have the 1990 Spencer and Christy Science paper I quoted above.
Did you make the op-ed Editor or Ed Board of the WSJ aware of Spencer & Christy’s earlier retractions and corrigenda when you submitted your Op-ed for publication in 2014?
Informative as usual; thanks.
Some minor nitpicks: “give an estimated warming trends” should be “…trend” and in “a canonical 1% increasing CO2” the HTML markup appears as text.