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A simple recipe for GHE

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According to some recent reports (e.g. PlanetArk; The Guardian), the public concern about global warming may be declining. It’s not clear whether this is actually true: a poll conducted by researchers at Stanford suggests otherwise. In any case, the science behind climate change has not changed (also see America’s Climate Choices), but there certainly remains a problem in communicating the science to the public.

This makes me think that perhaps a new simple mental picture of the situation is needed. We can look at climate models, and they tell us what we can expect, but it is also useful to have an idea of why increased greenhouse gas concentrations result in higher surface temperatures. The saying “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” has been attributed to Albert Einstein, which also makes me wonder if we – the scientists – need to reiterate the story of climate change in a different way.

Gavin has already discussed this (also see here and here), but it may be necessary to tell story over again, with a slightly different slant. So how can we explain how the greenhouse effect (GHE) work in both simple terms and with a new angle? I also want to explain why the middle atmosphere cools with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations associated with an increased GHE. Here I will try to present a conceptual and comprehensive picture of GHE, explaining both the warming in the lower part of the atmosphere as well as the cooling aloft, and where only the most central features are included. Also, it is important to provide a good background, and we need to start with some very fundamental facts.

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Penn State reports

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The last part of the Penn State inquiry has now reported unanimously that Mike Mann did not engage in any activity that violated scientific norms. Quoting from the report conclusions,

Conclusion of the Investigatory Committee as to whether research misconduct occurred:

The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.

More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.

The decision of the Investigatory Committee was unanimous.

What we said last time….

The uncertainty prayer

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Seen at a meeting yesterday:


Grant us…
The ability to reduce the uncertainties we can;
The willingness to work with the uncertainties we cannot;
And the scientific knowledge to know the difference.

(Drawn from a white paper on the use of climate models for water managers).

Discuss.

Leakegate: A retraction

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Back in February, we commented on the fact-free IPCC-related media frenzy in the UK which involved plentiful confusion, the making up of quotes and misrepresenting the facts. Well, a number of people have pursued the newspapers concerned and Simon Lewis at least filed a complaint (pdf) with the relevant press oversight body. In response, the Sunday Times (UK) has today retracted a story by Jonathan Leake on a supposed ‘Amazongate’ and published the following apology:

The article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim” that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’ research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.

In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We also understand and accept that Mr Rowell is an experienced environmental journalist and that Dr Moore is an expert in forest management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.

The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that, in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time, including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change.

In addition, the article stated that Dr Lewis’ concern at the IPCC’s use of reports by environmental campaign groups related to the prospect of those reports being biased in their conclusions. We accept that Dr Lewis holds no such view – rather, he was concerned that the use of non-peer-reviewed sources risks creating the perception of bias and unnecessary controversy, which is unhelpful in advancing the public’s understanding of the science of climate change. A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.

Note that the Sunday Times has removed the original article from their website (though a copy is available here), and the retraction does not appear to have ever been posted online. Here is a scan of the print version just in case there is any doubt about its existence. (Update: the retraction has now appeared).

This follows on the heels of a German paper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, recently retracting a story on the ‘Africagate’ non-scandal, based on reporting from….. Jonathan Leake.

It is an open question as to what impact these retractions and apologies have, but just as with technical comments on nonsense articles appearing a year after the damage was done, setting the record straight is a important for those people who will be looking at this at a later date, and gives some hope that the media can be held (a little) accountable for what they publish.

Five Thousand Gulf Oil Spills

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That’s the rate that people are releasing carbon to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation today. I know, it’s apples and oranges; carbon in the form of oil is more immediately toxic to the environment than it is as CO2 (although CO2 may be more damaging on geologic time scales). But think of it — five thousand spills like in the Gulf of Mexico, all going at once, each releasing 40,000 barrels a day, every day for decades and centuries on end. We are burning a lot of carbon!

Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Records – Trends and Ephemerality

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Guest Commentary from Urs Neu

To understand the influence of climate change on tropical cyclone and hurricane activity, it is crucial to know how this activity has varied in the past. There have been a number of interesting new studies of Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) and hurricanes (tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds exceeding 74 miles per hour) since my review of the topic a couple years ago (see here and here). These newer studies underscore that, while our knowledge continues to improve in this area, key uncertainties persist. In particular, it remains very difficult to confidently estimate trends in the past.

In assessing past trends, one must distinguish between two distinct time intervals: 1) the period of historical observations (mainly after 1850), and 2) the earlier period for which TC activity can only be reconstructed using proxy data. Furthermore, we have to distinguish between trends in tropical cyclone (TC) number and TC intensity–the latter measure is particularly important from the standpoint of impacts. There is no a priori reason to expect these quantities to vary in concert, either in the past, or in the future. Unfortunately, uncertainties are much greater for intensity than for counts.

In this article, I will review our current understanding of Atlantic TC and hurricane trends with respect to: A) the historical record of basin-wide TC numbers; B) the historical record of hurricanes and TC intensity; C) distant past proxy estimates of TC (primarily, hurricane only) counts; and D) distant past proxy measures of TC/hurricane intensity. I will conclude with a discussion of current methods for forecasting Atlantic hurricane activity.

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Recent trends in CO2 emissions

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Guest commentary by Corinne Le Quéré, Michael R. Raupach, and Joseph G. Canadell

There is a letter in Nature Geoscience this month by Manning et al (sub. reqd.) “Misrepresentation of the IPCC CO2 emission scenarios” discussing some recent statements about the growth rates of CO2 emissions compared to the IPCC scenarios that informed the climate modeling in the last IPCC report. In it they refer to results published by us and colleagues in a couple of recent papers (Raupach et al. 2007; Le Quéré et al. 2009), and to statements made by others on the basis of our results (Ganguly et al. 2009; Anderson et al. 2008; Reichstein 2010). Specifically, Manning et al object to the claim that “current CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning were higher than the values used in climate projections by the IPCC”.

We agree with the Manning et al’s main point, and appreciate the chance to provide some clarification on the graph in question and subsequent use of our result. To be specific, recent emissions were not higher than each and every one of the climate projections by the IPCC, as has been claimed by some other studies citing our work, although they were near the top end of the range.

So what is the claim of ‘misrepresentation’ based on?
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A conclusion of the 4th International Polar Year

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Translations: (Español) (Italian)

This week, the “Oslo Science conference” the largest conference ever -it was claimed – was held on polar sciences at Lillestrøm, just outside Oslo. Some of the web-casts from that meeting are worth watching, and I found especially the talk by David Barber (“On Thin Ice: The Arctic and Climate Change”, video link here) both a bit alarming as well as fascinating.

Storms and snow affect sea-ice growth, since a layer of snow on top of the ice insulates against the cold atmosphere and prohibits ice growth. Winds and extra mass can lead to break-up, and the amount of multi-annual ice is lower than expected; it has decayed and ‘rotted’. A mission with the Canadian ice breaker apparently managed to break ice slabs much thicker than expected, due to weaker ice. Also more recent reversals of the Beaufort gyre, unexpected long swells, and new ice on top of clumps of old ice fooling the satellites to think there is more multi-year ice than really the case, are just part of the story. In the mean while, the sea-ice for this season from NSIDC is on a low note.

The main message that I took home from this was that the sea-ice is more important than I previously thought. It appears clearer now that it plays a role in the Arctic amplification – which clearly is really emerging.

Some claim that reduced sea-ice can explain cold winters in the northern hemisphere, but I’m not yet convinced. The cold winters are due to weak Arctic Oscillation, and hence a shift in the air masses bringing frigid polar southwards, and this air is replaced by milder air in the polar region. Hence, a shift in the wind system as well as milder temperatures may favour less Arctic sea-ice.

The Antarctic sea-ice cover has increased on average in the last 30 years, but not everywhere. Both the general increase around East Antarctica and the large decrease off West Antarctica are attributed to the ozone hole and corresponding changes in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM, or the ‘Antarctic Oscillation’), though this probably doesn’t explain what is happening in winter. There is no clear polar amplification observed over Antarctica, such as seen as in the Arctic, and one explanation for this may be that the Antarctic continent has large ice sheets with enormous thermal inertia. But ice core data suggest that there have been amplification there in the past too. Nevertheless, the Arctic is characterized by a polar ocean with retreating sea-ice in the northern hemisphere. In both cases, changing air masses and the winds are important for inter-annual to inter-decadal variations, both in explaining cold winters over Eurasia and sea-ice around Antarctica.

Climate Change Commitment II

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Translations: (Español)

A couple of months ago, we discussed a short paper by Matthews and Weaver on the ‘climate change commitment’ – how much change are we going to see purely because of previous emissions. In my write up, I contrasted the results in M&W (assuming zero CO2 emissions from now on) with a constant concentration scenario (roughly equivalent to an immediate cut of 70% in CO2 emissions), however, as a few people pointed out in the comments, this exclusive focus on CO2 is a little artificial.

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